Ambiguous legend descriptions in layout and a request for general advice on creating a nice looking legend.

Question

Surely there has got to be a better way to communicate the differences between the various legend types than this, right?

Adding on to this, is there a good guide on how to create a simple and effective legend? Whenever I create a legend in Pro, I constantly get lost in the dozens of submenus trying to tweak the size of the various components of the legend so that it is easily visible on larger maps. Not sure if I'm missing something, but legends in Pro have always just been extremely cumbersome to set up for me.

MDB_GIS · Answer

I basically just create one of each pretty much every time I need a legend to see what looks best with the current layout and then delete the rest. Then spend 45 minutes dialing in the font sizes for each layer because every time, without fail, the legend text is way too small for the map size. No clue why it would use 14 pt font on a 36x48 layout. Makes no sense. Makes even less sense that the text and patch size does not scale when resizing the legend.

MErikReedAugusta · Answer

I've got to agree with you on these presets.  I genuinely have no idea what the intended difference is between them, because the icons are worthless.  I frequently find myself just blindly picking Legend 1 and tweaking it to my personal taste.

One of these days, though, I should actually try to analyze what the difference is between them and/or create my own presets (I think I remember that option being at the bottom of that pane, yes?)