it'd say it's a pretty bad idea to butcher fonts in a typography class. whatever you do, don't deform fonts. ideally you shouldn't be doing this in photoshop, because photoshop sucks at working with type. you'd be a lot better off in indesign or illustrator.
besides that, i'd start by scraping that font and going with a way better serif, something like garamond. a lot of the fonts in the background look bad too, they look like cheesy gimmicky fonts. i'd pick good fonts, established fonts.
thing is, i don't get contrast at all from this. it's not coming across. like i said, the arrangement to me doesn't' say anything about contrast. colors aren't really contrasted. i'm not sure what the little text with in the big text is for. if that's to contrast big type vs small type, that is probably the start of a better idea but it's not executed well. also what does the background add? what about it is contrasting? you have a million fonts going on. what would be the better choice would be for all the background fonts to be sans serif and the main to be serif fonts. there's a contrast.
ideas:
- size contrast
- sans serif vs serif
- clashing between different font systems based on their classification/time period
- humanist vs modern
- slab serif vs old style
- script vs geometric sans serif
- different font weights
- bold vs italic
- uppercase vs lowercase
then there's color contrast. i would argue that for a typography project, falling back on color as the main contrast element is week and i'd doubt what they are looking for. black and white is more effective, compliments letter forms better, and provides you with the ultimate contrast on it's own.