Professional Looking Templates.
Sometimes it can seem like documents created in Google Docs are doomed to mediocrity in the looks department. If you're creating a presentation there are ample high quality themes to go at. And Google does provide some templates in their template gallery for Google Docs which aren't bad but also leave a bit of room for improvement. Thankfully it's not too difficult to create your own document styles and templates to work from which can really make your Docs stand out.
Whilst I will explain how to lay out the page in Google Docs there is obviously nothing stopping you applying the same ideas within your documents made using other word processors.
To the right is an example page to illustrate what we are going to look at creating.
I would really encourage you to take the time to make your documents look professional. In the readers mind it reflects on the quality of the content but it will also increase their impression of you as the author. It is simple to do and will go a long way to increasing their opinion of you and your abilities. Though a great looking document can't make up for poor content (well maybe just a bit), it definitely will amplify the appeal of good and great content.
On the following page we'll look at a series of things you can do to set yourself up with professional and elegant looking documents. I'll run you through setting up styles and a template which I like but I encourage you to experiment and find a style that suits your taste. We'll set up our page with:
Styles allow you to specify what all elements of a certain type shall look like. They can save you a lot of time as they save you having to manually style every element on your document. Styles come with defaults but you can easily change them.
Using styles will save you time but will also ensure consistency within your document which will improve the professional look.
To change text to a certain style you don't need to click and drag to select all the text. Simply click anywhere within the text to move the cursor there, then click the Styles drop down menu and select the style you're after.
We want the main heading to stand out so we will make it a solid block of colour. We can then spice it up a bit by adding a border. It works well if you make the heading bar a rich colour and then the border a slightly darker, off version of that colour. It can also work well making it a contrasting colour.
Adding a logo or image to the far right of the heading bar and making it slightly bigger so that it breaks out from the bar also creates a nice break for the heading and leads the readers eye into the rest of the document.
Type your Main heading at the very top of the page. Then change it's style to Title. (See the image above for Styles.)
Let's add a background and side border. To do this first make sure your cursor is somewhere within the main heading text. Then go to Format -> Paragraph styles -> Borders and shading.
You will probably also want to change the colour of the text to white so that it stands out a bit clearer.
Now click the third icon next to Position, Make the Border width 6px, and set the Border colour and Background colour to colours of your choosing. Click Apply.
Experiment. Maybe you have no border. Maybe the border is on one of the other sides. Change the width of the border and the paragraph padding. Try different colours and combinations of colours.
We will now add an image to the top right to break the page up a bit and add that touch of style. If you have a company or school logo or banner, that would be a great image to put in this corner. If not then you may use this image for now.
Add the image in, resize it to be slightly larger than the Title bar, then place it in the top right corner. In orde r to do this you will need to make sure wrap text (middle icon to the left) and Fix position on page are set.
Then move your image to the top right. You will know that it is placed right when you see the red alignment lines show up.
Setting up the Headings is done in a similar manner to the Title, we're just going to modify the settings to suit.
Type your heading on the page. Then change it's style to Heading 1.
Change the font to one that is Serif. Also change the font size up a bit. Then change the font colour so that it stands out a bit on the page.
Now, similar to for the Title, set a border for the heading but this time make it along the bottom. Also set it to a different colour to the Title font to create a nice contrast.
You can change up how close or far the border line is from the heading text by playing with the Border padding (in the borders and shading dialogue) and Line-height values.
Similar to for the Title, don't forget to select the Update the style to match option. This way, all the headings on your page will automatically be styled to look the same. If you change your mind on something, you can experiment and have it keep them all consistent for you.
The footer is automatically placed at the bottom of every page. It is a nice way to cap off your content. We are going to style it to be subtle as it idealy shouldn't draw the readers attention away from the important stuff which is the document content.
To get to the menu section of the page click Insert -> Headers and Footers -> Footer. (You can also double click at the very bottom of the page.
Type what you want in the footer. Your class name, subject name or topic name is a good starting point.
Now let's put a line above the footer to help separate it from the rest of the document. Make it one point in thickness and it works nicely if it is a slightly lighter shade of the same colour as the title bar.
It's nice for users to know what page they are on (and of how many pages) so let's add this to the bottom right. To achieve this we're going to use what it called a tab-stop. Right click on the ruler at the top of the editing area to bring up the Tab Stop menu and select Right Tab stop.
The Right tab-stop is a triangle pointing to the left. Click on it and drag it to be on top of the right margin indicator (the blue triangle pointing down). Now if you put your cursor at the end of your text in your footer and press Tab, the cursor will jump to the far right of the page and as you type, the text will stay lined up with the right hand side.
We will add in the text <page number> of <total pages>. To do this, first make sure your cursor is tabbed to the far right of the page (which it should have been from the previous step). Then select Insert -> Page numbers -> Bottom corner (bottom left icon).
Now add a space then a slash then another space ( / ) then we'll add in the page count. Select Insert -> Page numbers -> Page count.
Finally we'll make the footer text a lighter shade to blend it into the background more. Triple click the text to selct everything (or click and drag). Then change the font colour to a medium shade of grey (Pick a lighter or darker shade of grey to your liking). You should now have a footer that looks something like below.
Spacing can really make the document, especially when it's matched to the font and image sizes well. It gives the document a flow which makes it very easy and intuitive for the reader to follow. Here are some things which I normally do to space out my documents:
The default page margins are quite large. Most printers nowadays can handle printing quite close to the edge and in fact many documents are only ever viewed on-line. Making the page borders smaller will also match them up closer to the gaps between headings and paragraphs creating a more coherent layout.
Click on File -> Page Setup and set your margins to 1cm (or 0.39 inches), then click OK.
(You can also select Set as default if you want so you don't have to keep changing this.
This is something I like to do as I think it makes the headings stand out more and helps to break the document up. It also makes the first section ( which isn't indented ) stand out a bit more too which is where I tend to put important overview information.
This one I find depends on the overall layout of the page but experimenting with larger line spacing values can create a nice overall effect. If I have big blocks of text I will tend to increase the line spacing (1.5 normally) but when I have smaller blocks of text with more lists and images I find leaving the line spacing at it's default (1.15) looks nicer. Experiment and see what you prefer.
Selecting to Add a space after paragraph also spaces out your paragraphs a bit more and makes them easier to read.
The default colour pallette is ok but if you really want to stand out you can benefit from creating your own colour scheme. This Colour scheme tool is quite useful for creating a series of matching colours for your document headings and so on.
The default fonts are ok but we can find some better ones. Google has a massive font library to choose from so you can find a set of fonts to suit your taste. I would recommend you experiment with combinations to match your different fonts and achieve the look you are after. I find it works best to have a sans serif font for the main content and the main heading then a serif font for the headings and sub headings but you find what works best for you.
The fonts which I like are :
To find more fonts beyond the default set :
Highlight the text you want to change the font for. Then click on the font dropdown and select + More fonts.
Scroll through the list of fonts and click all the fonts you are interested in. Spend a bit of time looking through them as there are quite a big spread of styles. Finding just the right fonts will really help to make your documents stand out.
We don't want to go through all this effort every time we create a document, and thankfully we don't have to. There are two things you can do to save you all this hassle.
The first thing we can do is save our styles to be our default styles. This way, any new documents we create will automatically have a title, headings and normal text with the look that we prefer.
To do this, click on the Styles dropdown, then mouse over the final option Options, then click on Save as my default styles, to easy.
If you change your mind you can always Reset styles which will return you to the Google Docs default set of styles.
The first thing is convenient but unfortunately it won't save you any time on your footer, or page margins, or that fancy logo to the right of your title. You can only set one default set of styles as well and maybe you want different document set ups for different purposes. eg. I like to have different title bar background colours for different types of documents so they easily stand out. An easy way to do this is to create a set of Template documents.
To do this, create a blank document and set up all the elements exactly how you want it. Don't put any content in however. Save this document as _Template_type.
By starting the name with an underscore it will mean the document will be at the top of your file list making it easy to grab. Also, replace type in the name with the type of template it is so it's easy for you to identify. Now you can place these in an easy to get to location and whenever you want to make a new document, start by creating a copy of the template document, renaming it and you are all set to go.
You could also put some skeleton content into the template as well if applicable so save you even more time.
These ideas are really easy to implement and they can really make your documents stand out. To make it work they all need to come together as a coherent whole so spend some time tweaking and experimenting till you get it just right. Sometimes bold changes can lead to interesting discoveries so don't hesitate to make a copy of your documents and really change things up to see where it takes you.
Education is the kindling of a flame,
not the filling of a vessel.
- Socrates
