Produce academic LaTeX whitepapers that look expensive, not cheap. Use when writing or revising a technical whitepaper (.tex), designing its TikZ figures, or reviewing one that "looks cheap." Encodes a restraint-first house style (one serif typeface, one accent color, consistent figure craft), the anti-cheap checklist, the pedagogic apparatus (callouts, exercises, reader's-map, pull-quotes), and a mandatory render-read-audit loop.
Produce academic LaTeX whitepapers that look expensive, not cheap. Use when writing or revising a technical whitepaper (.tex), designing its TikZ figures, or reviewing one that "looks cheap." Encodes a restraint-first house style (one serif typeface, one accent color, consistent figure craft), the anti-cheap checklist, the pedagogic apparatus (callouts, exercises, reader's-map, pull-quotes), and a mandatory render-read-audit loop.
io-contract
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High-Quality LaTeX Whitepaper
A whitepaper is a credibility object. It is judged in the first three seconds, by
its look, before a word is read. Cheap-looking typesetting tells the reader "a
script made this," and no amount of good content recovers that first impression.
This skill is the discipline that makes a paper look like it came from a press.
The cardinal rule: restraint reads as authority. One typeface. One accent
color. Consistent figures. Generous whitespace. Every time you reach for a
second font, a third color, or a saturated fill, you are spending credibility.
When to use
Writing or revising a technical whitepaper in LaTeX.
Designing or fixing its TikZ figures.
Someone said the PDF "looks cheap," "looks like a script made it," or "yikes."
Building a multi-paper volume that must read as one set.
The argument itself (use research-craft) or doc structure (use technical-writer).
The seven cheap tells (find and kill every one)
These are the exact defects that make a paper look amateur. Grep, look, fix.
#
Cheap tell
Why it reads cheap
The fix
1
Off-palette color (a lime-green bar, a neon rule, a primary-blue box)
One wrong color screams "default" and destroys the page's restraint
Every color comes from the defined palette. No raw green/blue/red; no decorative bars. Grep \definecolor — if a color isn't in your palette block, it doesn't exist.
2
Sans-serif text inside figures on a serif body
The font-clash is the #1 "a script assembled this" signal
Figures use the same serif as the body. Never \sffamily in a figure unless the whole document is sans.
3
Multi-colored / multi-weight bold (a rainbow status key)
Busy, juvenile, no hierarchy
One accent color, used once per figure for the single most important thing. Status labels: muted ink/gray, differentiated by weight or small-caps, not by hue.
One subtle fill (sand at ~15–40% opacity), identical across every figure in the paper.
5
Labels riding on lines; cramped boxes
The eye can't parse it; feels unfinished
Labels sit in clear bands beside/above arrows, never on them. Generous inner padding, consistent node sizes.
6
Inconsistent scale/spacing between figures
Each figure looks like a different author
Define box/arrow/label styles once in the preamble; every figure uses them. Same line width, font size, palette.
7
A status key / footer shouting in color
Internal bookkeeping leaking into the artifact's chrome
Footer is quiet (small, single ink color, a thin rule). Status labels live in an appendix table, not a colored footer band.
If a figure has any of these, it is a defect, not a style choice.
The house style (the load-bearing rules)
The full canonical preamble — packages, palette, theorem envs, fancyhdr, the
\keyidea/\pitfall/exercises/\pullquote commands, and the shared TikZ
styles — is in references/preamble.tex. Copy it verbatim; do not improvise a
parallel one. The rules it enforces:
One typeface family for the whole document, body and figures: the serif.
Hierarchy comes from size, weight, and small-caps (\textsc) — not color, not a second font.
microtype on. Real ligatures, em-dashes, quotes.
Color — the discipline that matters most
A named palette block at the top (warm paper, ink, one accent, a few muted structural tones). Nothing outside it.
One accent color (e.g. a cinnabar/oxblood). It marks the single most important thing on a page or in a figure — the "you are here," the one warning, the one result. Used more than once per view, it stops meaning anything.
Structural color is muted and functional: arrows, rules, a subtle fill. Never decorative, never saturated.
Banned: raw red/green/blue, neon/lime anything, colored footer bars, full-opacity fills, more than one accent.
Figures (TikZ)
Define box, accentbox, arrow, label styles once in the preamble; reuse everywhere.
One fill (paper-sand, low opacity). One stroke (ink). The accent only on the one node that earns it.
Figure text = the body serif, ~\small/\footnotesize, consistent across figures.
Labels in clear bands; arrows -{Stealth} (arrows.meta), consistent width.
Every figure's \caption states the takeaway, not just names the parts.
Pedagogic apparatus (tasteful, not loud)
Callouts (\keyidea, \pitfall): a thin left rule + a very subtle fill, label in small-caps. A \pitfall may use the accent on its label only, never a saturated box.
exercises environment: a quiet boxed list — check / trace / starred-open-problem.
Pull-quotes: large italic, a single accent left-stripe, generous margin.
Reader's-Map table at the top (reader type → section). Honest-status mapping (built/partial/specified/proposed) goes in an appendix table, muted ink with small-caps/weight differences — never a colored key in the running chrome.
The render → read → audit loop (mandatory, not optional)
A figure you have not looked at is not done. For every figure:
Compile (or the whole paper) with pdflatex (3 passes for refs/TOC).
Render the page to PNG (pdftoppm -png -r 150, or magick).
Read the PNG with your own eyes (the Read tool shows images).
Audit against the seven cheap tells + this paper's other figures (same scale? same fill? labels clear? accent used once?).
Fix and re-render until clean.
"It compiles" is not the bar. "It looks like a press made it, and it matches its siblings" is the bar.
One typeface in the whole PDF (no sans-in-figures clash).
One accent color; every color traces to the palette block; no off-palette/neon/bar.
No multi-colored/multi-weight bold; status shown by weight/small-caps, not hue.
All figures share one box style, one fill, one arrow style, consistent scale.
Every figure rendered and looked at; no labels on lines; generous padding.
Callouts/pull-quotes/exercises are quiet (thin rule, subtle fill), not saturated boxes.
Footer/header small, single-ink, a thin rule — no colored band.
Real citations with \cite; first use of a term in bold; a references section.
Reader's-Map present; status/maturity table in an appendix, not the chrome.
Read one page aloud: does it look like a journal article? If you wince, fix the wince.
Anti-patterns (named, so they're refusable)
The ransom note. Three+ colors and two+ fonts on one page — the most common way a generated paper looks cheap. Cure: one font, one accent.
The wireframe. Saturated default TikZ box fills (fill=blue!20, bright beige). Cure: one subtle paper-sand fill, palette-defined.
The neon footer. A colored bar or rainbow status key in the running chrome. Cure: quiet footer; status to an appendix.
The compile-and-ship. Calling a figure done because it compiled, without rendering and looking. Cure: the render→read→audit loop.
The lonely figure. A figure that looks like a different author than its siblings (different scale/fill/font). Cure: shared preamble styles.
The decorative theorem. Color/boxes used to look rigorous. Cure: rigor is in the proof; the typesetting stays quiet.
Why this is the skill, not just a preamble
The preamble is necessary but not sufficient — an agent with the right \definecolor
block will still ship a lime-green bar if it does not look. This skill is the
judgment: a small palette, one font, and a habit of rendering and auditing every
figure against its siblings. That habit is the difference between a PDF that looks
like a press made it and one that looks like a script did.
