DeFacto Blog

A while ago I stumbled upon a very nice article on visual presentation. Unfortunately I cannot remember what the source is, but I suspect it is somewhat linked to Lifehacker - a multi-purpose blog on how to improve day-to-day life.

Anyways, it seems a lot of people could use a hand on how to better present their documents.

1. Use an extra-bold sans serif font for heads and subheads.
   Use a serif font for the body (preferably something other than Times New Roman).
2. Like white wine with fish, an extra-bold sans serif font pairs nicely with a regular or light sans serif font
   if you have a head or subhead that carries two separate concepts.
3. Set your paragraph line spacing to, say, 125% of the font size. Experiment with it.
   Different fonts tolerate line spacing differently. The idea is to give your type a little visual room between lines.
   But not too much (don’t use 1.5x or double line spacing).
4. Don’t run your body copy across the full width of the page with symmetrical margins.
   Instead, make the body copy roughly two-thirds the width of the page (after taking .75″ margins into account) —
   and make the margins different for left and right pages. For example, for odd-numbered pages,
   you should have 2/3 body copy followed by 1/3 margin. For even-numbered pages, you should have 1/3 margin followed by 2/3 body copy.
5. Don’t set your paragraphs justified (where the type on each line fills a fixed width). Type is always set unjustified, ragged right.
6. Captions and photos can be placed in the 1/3 margin. Set your captions in a serif font, italicized.
   Use a text box with the border set to None.
7. Use thin 0.5pt horizontal rules underneath heads or subheads. Don’t use hairline rules.
   Don’t go crazy with them, either — a little goes a long way.
8. Don’t overdo with footers and headers. Set them in 8pt sans serif type,
   and mix bold or extra bold plus regular or light on the same line for variety.

That would be all for now.

Happy self-improvement