Hi, Thanks for quick answer.
do you have also questions on beginners level or has everything to be on expert level. I use latex for 5 years daily and I would like to have something cleaner that what I've now. During thoose years I also approaches "advanced" stuff like package modification and TeX programming. So, I'm not really a begin user in TeX but a begin user in context.
It's hard to say what't the best method in your case is because more information are needed. The first thing that came to my mind was to reduce the text area to a narrow column and place the extra text and the figures and a wide left margin. Ok, so I was not so wrong. But my main concern is about the background that has to take the full height and half width. In addition, if the background may be larger than the page it would nice in case of printing (so, no margin at all)
Regards, Antoine C.