#lang pollen

◊(define-meta title "letterhead")
◊hanging-topic[(topic-from-metas metas)]{Divide into foreground and background}


Not everything in a page layout is equally important. As I mentioned in ◊xref{maxims of page layout}, I think of documents as having a foreground, containing the most important elements, and a background, containing everything else. Typography communicates this distinction to the reader visually.

Picture a sheet of letterhead. What’s in the foreground? If you said “the address block,” then I’m guessing you pictured a blank sheet of letterhead. But letterhead is never used blank. So more accurately, the foreground contains the text of the letter. The background contains the address block.

Yet lawyer letterhead often suffers from two problems. First, the address block (the background) dominates the page, upstaging the text of the letter (the foreground). Second, the foreground and background don’t relate to each other visually.

◊before-and-after-pdfs["letterhead"]

◊alternate-after-pdf["letterhead"]