If your base gutter is 12, the next step might be 18 or 24. You can also employ units with padding as you mentioned. To keep a well organized grid, you can set the type in some kind of container that adheres to the base grid with the type inset by a unit or two or three.
Updated for January 12, 2017 (Toddlers) patch. Pose Player. This is a mod that will add the option to play poses and animations in game. It adds an interaction to your sims called Pose By Name and Pose By Pack. Just click on your sim like you would to do anything else.
This tutorial will show you how to use the Pose Player mod. You will need to make sure that script mods are enabled for your game. You can do that from your in-game settings. 1. Download the Pose Player mod and extract the two files inside the .zip. Place both files into your Sims 4 Mods folder as shown below. You can also put custom poses into your Mods folder if you would like them to be played in the game.