After the designer has determined letter and word spacing, he will next look at the lines of text
as a whole. In deciding on the general setup of the ‘page’, he has to consider economy,
aesthetics, and reading comfort as well as readability. These four considerations can easily
be found to conflict with each other. In setting margins, economy asks for narrow margins,
whereas aesthetic preference may dictate wider margins. Naturally, aesthetic preference
varies and may thus lead to different decisions from one design to the next. Likewise, a
reader might find wide margins comfortable, but this need not always warrant the highest
level of readability. Again, it is not possible to state a general guideline for reading comfort
either. However, typographer Tarbet (1996)
argues that wide margins are advisable because they allow the page to ‘breathe’. With this
she means that large spaces of white at the rims will reduce the emphasis on the text and
give the reader a sense of lightness. She considers this especially important for the lower and
side margins. Judging by the fact that such ‘airy’ margins are often used, many typographers
seem to share this notion. Readability, finally, is influenced by two typographic aspects
related to the setting of margins, which will be the focus of this paragraph and the next,
namely alignment and line width.
Alignment is the way the lines of text are arranged in relation to each other within the
margins that have been set. The typographer can choose to align the lines to either the left or
the right, justify, or center the lines of text. Figure
13 shows the effect of these four options.
Figure 13:
Four Kinds of Alignment: top left: range left, top right: range right,
bottom left: justified, bottom right: centered
