Classicthesis Vertical Margins

Question

I've been using the classicthesis package to write my master's thesis and now that I was getting the entire thing ready for printing I ran into some trouble. The thing is that I'm not really satisfied with the style's vertical margins. I know that many people try to adjust the horizontal margins as they seem a little wide, but I'm perfectly fine with that. I would just like to take the entire text block and center it vertically a little more. The way it is now, the top and bottom margins are slightly out of balance, which becomes especially apparent when turning off the drafting option.

So, is there any way to adjust the top and bottom margins without affecting the rest of the layout?

Answer 1

classicthesis uses the package typearea, which tries to preserve a general aspect when changing the text block (check the Chapter 2 in the KOMA-Script Guide for the motives (See also this answer to How to configure KOMA classes such that the bottom margin of a page equals its top margin?) The text block is defined in classicthesis (when not using minion option) as:

\areaset[current]{336pt}{750pt} % ~ 336 * factor 2 + 33 head + 42 \the\footskip

Following a sugestion within classicthesis.sty, a good proportion for Palatino 11pt would be 336 × 705pt, which results in a sort of vertically symmetrical text block. A MWE:

\documentclass[11pt]{book}
\usepackage{classicthesis}
\usepackage{blindtext,layouts}
  \areaset[current]{336pt}{705pt}% as suggested in classicthesis.sty, line 273
\begin{document}
\blindtext[6]\footnote{blindtext}
\begin{figure}
\currentpage
\pagediagram% To check the layout and lengths
\pagevalues
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Another option would be to call geometry: as stated in the first comment to What packages are incompatible with KOMA-Script?, "geometry resets the from typearea calculated margins if you don't use the option pass (for showframe)". We lose the automatic calculated margins, therefore we lose the aspect, but it is possible. A MWE:

\documentclass[11pt]{book}
\usepackage{classicthesis}
\usepackage{blindtext,layouts}
\usepackage[top=48pt,bottom=48pt,textwidth=336pt]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\blindtext[6]\footnote{blindtext}
\begin{figure}
\currentpage
\pagediagram% To check the layout and lengths
\pagevalues
\end{figure}
\end{document}