Page Layout - Contrasting colours - Black & White

Personally, I love the contrast of black and white when used in design, I have found various pages in magazines which use that specific contrast to create mood and effect for that specific article.

This article found in Vice magazine clearly is one which is trying to convey a very emotional story. They have used a black background and white typeface to set a mood and a tone to the article,
I feel that this has been executed very well and the use of desaturated imagery gives off a very powerful and emotive feeling.
The pages in this book appeal to me very much, and immediately when I turned the page to this double spread the design work hit me, and emotively jumped out to me.

The large photograph found on the left hand side of the publication fades out to where the type is, in a gradient type mode. The effect that this has on the layout looks very professional and creative, something which largely appeals to me.

Mighty Boosh book
The mighty boosh book contains some very creative pages, filled with colourful artwork, in this instance I have chosen the 3 double page spreads which make use of a black background and white text.

This double page spread entitled 'A Hitchhiker's tale' uses two A4 pages which work injunction with each other, one page containing a large image of the character, and the other containing the body copy font of the story.
The image works against the black background due to the fact that the character is a silhouette with a bright white light behind the figure, similar to how the spread from vice was B&W.
This spread works well, but I feel due to the image being retained to one page, and the text on the other, that can look rather basic and unprofessional.

 The part two from this story features another double page spread which has a black background and an image on one A4 and body copy on the other.
In this instance, the image has a lot of vibrant colour involved with it, which still adds a powerful effect to the page.
I feel so far, the double spread from Vice works better than this story.

This other double page spread from the Might boosh book contains a black background and an image that spreads across one A4 page and the other 1/3rd of the page, which lies next to a song and it's lyrics.
This image has much more of a presence and contains a lot more colour than the previous ones.
The image fades in a gradient which leaves room for the blocked black background.

Conclusion
From this short exercise into researching Black backgrounds on page layouts, I have learnt that black and white pictures with a high contrast work very well against black backgrounds, and white type works very well against black backdrop.
I have found out that an image spanning across the double page and fading out into a gradient can look very nice, and I shall try and execute these in my own designs.