We used ‘since always’ in our documentation a picture containing elements rectangles and references (second picture with values) on top of grayed copper.
This looks like I showed here:
and I believe is even better for someone populating components as seeing tracks cen better identify places when there are crowded region.
First what I have checked before making decision to move to KiCad was to find the way in KiCad to get such picture. My conclusion (it was KiCad 4.0.7) was that to get it I have to have references and values at courtyard layer. So all my footprints are defined that way. Those time I had to use Inkscape to get my pictures but with KiCad V8 (or may be even V7) I am able to get it directly from KiCad.
The only problem left is output sheet size (solved by 3 hotkeys in inkscape). See:
As KiCad allows (I didn’t tried it) to move texts (selected as needed) at PCB to other layer than it should be possible to move them to courtyard as I have and get pictures like mine. If is it posiible to have pads and not tracks - I suppose it should be possible.