Set in Style

Consider this reduction of a page from a client alert.

What’s wrong with the layout? If you don’t have an opinion, you don’t know page design.

What’s wrong is manifold:

• indents AND leading are used to set off paragraphs
• the copy is justified, but not hyphenated
• the copy is set in Arial
• word spacing is uneven
• a head is underlined

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Let’s suppose you’re an attorney, and you just wrote this very impressive client alert. You want it to look good when it’s published. And that means you don’t want it to resemble the alert shown above.

What should you do? Sign up for a night course in design?

Here’s a better idea — imitate the pros.

And how do you imitate the pros? Simple!

Go to a bookstore, or a library, or the waiting room to a doctor’s office. Browse what’s on the shelves, or on the tables. See how white space is used, how paragraphs are formatted, how serif type is used for body copy, how sans-serif type is used for heads, how underlines aren’t used at all, and how some lines end (along the right margin) with a hyphen.

That’s how the pros do it.

Imitate them, and your client alert will look like it was produced by professionals.

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Here’s an even better idea. If your client alert looks anything like the one at the top of this post, get help. Find a competent designer, someone who knows page layout and design.

Let her worry about how you look in print. Then all you have to do is concentrate on the content.

If you do what you’re good at, and she does what she’s good at, then you benefit from the combined effort.

This entry was posted 23 February 2009 at 9:44 and is filed under Client Alerts & Such, General, Looking Good, Setting Things Right. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.