The contents page

My next step was to create the contents page

In my final rough design I had the contents title in the top left third of the page. I then had two text colums and three images underneath.

However when i started creating the contents page i changed my mind all together. I completly scrapped the rough design and tried something different. I opted to have the background as one image and then have the contents title and pages references on top.

Before I put the background image in I first put the title and page references. Once I did that I began looking at background iamges. At first i concidered having the Rastafarian flag as the background...



...but I thought it would be more interesting to go with a computer generated graphic. I didn't have the software needed to create a good looking computer graphic so I decided to choose one off the internet. After having looked at lots of graphics I choose two to work with. I put each of them on the contents page to see which one i prefered.
The first one I tried was the image below.




Having looked at it on the page I prefered the other one and decided to go with that.
Once I had put the background iamge in i started working on the contents title and page references. I decided to keep the title green and in the same font Bauhaus 93 as the masthead on the front cover. I also applied the Bevel and drop shadow effects. For the page references I again used the same font Bauhaus 93 to give concistency. I had the text in a lighter red then the much darker red background so that the text stood out but also matched the background colour scheme.

Below is an image of the rough design



Once i had finished the contents page design I sat back and looked at it. I wasnt satisfied. The main reason being that the background image from the internet which I had altered was pixelated. This is a common problem with images off the web.

So I had a problem. I wanted a computer generated graphic but I didnt have the software needed to create one and images off the internet were to low resolution and often pixelated. So I decided to have a graphic made for me by my cousin. My cousin works for a poster devolpement company and often makes amazing computer graphics. So i asked him if he could design me a computer graphic for a music magazine. Three days laster I got an email with the file attached. I loved the image, it was a crazy graphic with amazing effects. So i decided to redo my contents page background and text colour.

I changed the title font to Calibri and changed the primary colour to blue. I then used bevel and outer glow which I set to white/silver to match the background. I did the same thing to the page references but I made the title outer glow much thicker then the page references. I then used the clone tool in photoshop to manipulate some of the lines in the image to rap around the contents title giving a cool warped affect.

Below is an image of my final contents page design



I sat back and looked at my new contents page and was now satisfied. I then moved on to my double page spread.