Here are a few key design goals to bear in mind when creating printed documents. It is always important to do the following:

– make your work accessible

– be clear when it comes to structure and order

– link the text to the other elements in the document (like images and charts)

– create a clear and natural flow so people will want to keep reading

Samsung’s Smart UX Center offers apps allow everyone in the office to create amazing-looking reports, and print them out to professional standards. Read about some tips – and handy Samsung apps – that will help you achieve your design goals.

Types and Fonts

Remember to keep your style consistent. People used to believe that serif fonts (such as Times New Roman or Garamond) were a better fit for printed pages, while sans serif fonts (like Arial) were more suitable for computer screens. However, many now believe there is really little difference between the two in terms of readability. What matters much more is consistency and suitability. Consider the style of each typeface – and identify when you want your work to look classy, fun, informal or personal.

Typefaces can take up very different amounts of space, even when your word processor software shows them as having the same font size. For example, Times New Roman is wide and takes up a lot of space, while Garamond is known to be smaller and less space-consuming.

Font size is no small matter, especially for longer documents. Using smaller fonts consumes less paper – potentially saving your company a lot of money. A couple of years ago, the US General Service Administration discovered that it could save $136 million in printing costs by switching its primary font to Garamond.

Fortunately, you can take control of your printing with Samsung Printing Solutions’ Smart UX Center apps like Hancom Office. Using Hancom Office, you can edit text right on the 10.1-inch Android screen, selecting different typefaces and sizes until you have just the look you want.

Promoting Clarity

Shaping your page can be nearly as important as the information you fill it with. So when you put your text onto a page, it is crucial not to get carried away and try to cram in too much information.

You should also be careful to avoid creating large blocks of unbroken text, which can often make people reluctant to read, or cause them to simply skip over text-dense sections. When possible, it is preferable to break up text regularly with images and charts, creating a balanced and visually pleasing look.

When it comes to page layout, well-informed designers say you should strive for balance, avoiding off-center empty spaces and excessive clutter. That said, using balanced amounts of white space can often help emphasize key elements of your text, and make your documents easier to read.

Another useful app for improving your report design is the Workbook Composer. This free app allows users to adjust documents on the fly, cropping images to print only the parts they need – or changing text formatting using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

Consider the Basics

When it comes to style, there are no hard and fast rules, and sometimes it is hard to generalize about what makes a page’s design stand out.

But paying some attention to a few basic rules of layout – like those above – can help you reap dividends both in terms of cost and visual appeal.