Revisiting the Contents Page

In the post beforehand I expressed my lack of satisfaction with the contents page that I have constructed. Reflecting on both the layout and general content I included, the conclusion I reached was that the tone I established on the cover was not adequately reciprocated in this section of my finished product. Therefore I want to continue experimenting with ideas by diverting away from the format illustrated in my flat plans. 

For my second attempt, there were several changes I wanted to make in both textual content and visual layout. I will list some of the modifications below that will hopefully improve on my initial page.

• 'This issue'
  To identify the page, magazines all tend to mention 'contents' somewhere but in addition to this a lot of them include 'this issue' or 'this week' in a bolder font to exaggerate relevance. In my first draft I used the conventional 'contents' to title my page, but this time I want to reduce the scale to make room for 'This Issue' which will act as a defining feature on the page.
  
  
• Editor's Note 
  This is an optional feature to include on the contents, but an editor's note is always evident somewhere towards the start of a magazine to introduce it from an employee's perspective.  The purpose is to humanise the institution who create and distribute the product.
  
  
• Second Image 
  My first draft was heavily dependent on text, so I thought that maybe I could use the secondary photo to balance the ratio a bit better. But since the lighting wasn't very good in the shot I picked, I want to further experiment with the software to make it an equal contrast to the main image on the page. 
  
  
• Colour 
  I've already said that using a greyish tint to certain elements of the page were deliberate to act as a transition from the black and white layer over the front cover image. However I've ended up using grey to cover a large surface area of the page, so I thought a variety of paler shades might counteract the darkened effect.
  
  
• Spaciousness
  The dark overcast of the grey boxes made the page seem very compact and crammed with information. Although this is good in some ways for making the reader think that the magazine has lots to offer, you don't want it to be an overwhelming quantity. This links with colour, but I want to make the layout more spacious in order to give each section a definitive location.