It's worth noting that Chaosium's graphic design was, circa 1985, amongst the best in the industry. Sidebars in boxes, good whitespace, relevant illustrations for the location, use of font/face for conveyance of structure...
The peak, however, was the AH+Chaosium and GW+Chaosium layouts for RQ3. Chaosium's rules, and the two companies making different layout choices. The GW is, to me, a friendlier one; the 5 volume AH boxed set with only internal paper stock makes me nervous to even reread, let alone use at table. (tho' it is good quality paper stock.) It is, however, well laid out in 3 color (black, grey and red) design. I'm too lazy to check for the grey being actual grey or dithered black.
The art was always reflecting either the examples or the rules in that area. The bestiary, with all of its many odd critters that are not from classic fantasy, was largely well labeled. And that made them much more useable, and allowed more of them.