I think I learned from my mistake with the legend last time and made the legend quite a bit better. Forget the horizontal format, I am speaking more of the format. Geologic Features is obviously one entity, faults is another entity, and landslides is another. Therefore they all need to look the same. The actual geologic features themselves are just a subset. As such I kept them the same font but made the font smaller and changed to small caps. This is the perfect kind of use for the "small caps" function. I really dislike how the label of faults does not just extend to the end instead of just cutting off. You don't really have too much control over how these legends are made using the tool.
We were instructed to make a regional map this week. I messed around with some variations of it, but in the end I thought that given the space available, giving it a background with a shadow was the best choice. One can make out that small study area, that's the whole point.
Last thing I did was realize that my faults were blending in with the rest of the map. So I changed them from the reddish color that they were originally to a blue. Typically blue means water, but since water is not conveyed anywhere on this map in any capacity, using it for something you need to stick out is fine I think.
I also messed around with the layers of the faults, landslides, and 50% transparency top geologic feature layer. I decided to have the geologic feature layer by the very top layer, followed by the last 2 feature classes. Reason being is that they were just too rigid, dark, and course on the very top. It distracted from the beauty of the map as it is now.