Formatting various levels of subheads

[marlene]

I'm working on a project -- a 60-page paper, text only, two colors, 8.5 x 11. In addition to the main heads (chapter titles), there are three levels of subheads.

Text is serif. I've made the main heads sans serif, 18 pt, bold, color.

First level of subheads are 14 pt sans serif bold italic, color. I don't like them being italic.

Second level subheads are serif, bold italic, black, two points larger than the text.

Third level subheads are serif, bold, black, a half-point larger than the text.

All heads/subheads are u/lc.

I do not like the way I'm doing the subheads, but don't know if there some guidelines I could be following for subhead formatting.

My current formatting is particularly unsatisfactory because some of the third level subhead text is italicized (they were italic in the original Word file), so they might be confused with second level subheads.

Any suggestions? Should all of the heads/subheads be in the sans serif font. Should they all be in the second color?

mxh