Does A4 have a use anymore?

In an age where people rarely send letters or faxes. In a world where saving paper and ink would be seen as a huge advantage. In a time when every home has a desktop printer but those printers are used to print out address, or phone numbers or tickets. Why does the default paper size have to be A4?

One of the biggest uses of A4 is for stuff like this.

Every single one of these notices could have been produced on A5. Indeed they would have looked better on A5. In fact, I'll bet the total print area of most of these notices could fit on A5.

So why don't we have smaller, A5 printers. Why isn't A5 paper the standard paper size you can buy in Tescos? Why isn't an A5 printer more common place at home?

Wouldn't that be a more useful and a more efficient size?

Comments

[David]

The world of university is long behind me, but I expect it's still standard for student's to hand in A4 hard copies of their pojects and essays - impractical for A5. So there's one reason. But I'm sure teachers will soon take to the the iPhone 4 and iPad like a dream!

[Emma]

A4 is efficient - it means you can print out two grouchy A5 signs in one go!

[Jonathan]

You can cut A4 down to A5, but you can't grow two A5s into one A4...

[Paul H. Colman]

Even you're back on form now.

[Alexander Charchar]

You beat me to it David!

I'd imagine there are a lot more assignments being printed than, say, addresses..

As for signs, I guess an A4 page is easier to see than an A5 one in an office environment.. not to mention that it's a lot harder to find A5 paper than it is A4 and even harder to find a plastic-slip folder that can take A5 pages.

And a lot of documents are still being printed (ie. brochures, annual reports) at A4 just because of economy -- again, rip a page out, into a slip folder it goes, photocopy it to A4 because everything is A4 anyway.

It's a good point, though it might be one of those things that is just 'one of those things', you know?

besides, there's only so much 72pt times new roman, papyrus or comic sans you can fit on an A5 ;)

I'm more confused by the continual existence of Letter sizes

[Wu Yong]

I guess you'd feel a bit insignificant if you walked into a meeting room with bunch of A5 sheets?

On the other hand, whenever I forget my notebook I find myself folding a sheet of A4 into A5. A4 size is useless for any handwritten text... It's like trying to read a broadsheet in economy class.

[Dominic Cronin]

Some people still use printers to print documents instead of signs.

Personally, I print out those A4 reports two-pages-to-a-sheet, so your point is well taken, however the A5 printer would need to be twice as fast.

[Andy Rudkin]

What a complete waste of a blog post.

Some people have way too much time on their hands.

[Ben]

Andy - This blog is about exactly this kind of stuff, so not a wasteful post at all. And rest assured I do not have too much time on my hands.

Everyone else - What I mean is that A5 paper and printers should be much more common making it simple to print lots of things that need less that A4. Of course we'd still need A4 for certain things.

[AaB]

But an A4 printer can print A5!? 2up if you want.
I'm with Andy on this one.

The blog should have been about people / non-designers accepting the norm without asking why / how / what… An A4 printer is able to print A5, with bleed, trim marks, annotations, and even some room for a breakout or two - perhaps a starburst to really catch attention ;-) The limiting factor is the brain not the media in this situation.

[Wu Yong]

Yeah, but most people would use MS Word for printing their stuff out anyway. You can't be too creative with that, unless you're some kind of lo-fi layouting guru who refuses to use InDesign. The limitations of the available technology make people stupid. 12p Times New Roman on A4 is the default, that's why you see so much crap in that format...

PS Just had an nasty wargument with my girlfriend about standard paper sizes, it's clearly an important topic.

[Steve Leard]

If A4 still is still needed for certain things, but people only had A5 printers they wouldn't be able to print A4.

People can print A5 on a regular printer, they just choose not to. I think the amount of wasted paper that is printed is more of an issue (especially from design agencies)

[davidthedesigner]

Me? I'm worried about all that bluetack.

[Chloe]

Hey Ben, I just came across this blog accidentally and I know it is ages since you wrote it, what a good observation, I've never thought about that, we only use A4 because that's what we're all used to and if packs of A5 paper were as available in the shops as A4 (I've never come across a shop that sells a big pack of A5 paper)more people would use it. As for Andy's comment, nobody caring about these sorts of things is what affects our environment, half the size of paper means half the amount of trees cut down :)