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.
I have an ask box filled with questions about the Pose Player so I thought I would write a small guide about where to find it, how to install it and how to use it. The pose player is a program written by cmomoney for Sims 3. You can download it here, at Mod the Sims. In order for it to work, you need to have you Sims 3 game set up for custom content. You can follow my guide here on how to install CC or you can use Mod the Sims guide here.