Media AS

M a k i n g o f t h e M a s t h e a d

Initial Thoughts and Ideas

My magazine is going to be based around the rock genre and so my first thoughts for a mast head is to have something that stands out, that is catchy and is related to music and based around to category of rock.

The first thing I need to do is research. I will be researching into different mastheads that come from music related magazines.

Then is will use the information that I have researched to create my own. I already have a few ideas but I want to get a good portfolio of research that can help me create my masthead, so it looks the part and works with my genre.

I will be looking at the whole masthead, this includes the colour scheme, the date, barcode, issue number and most importantly the design of the logo and name itself.

Research

This is the logo taken from the magazine Kerrang! I really like this because it is very simple but very effective. All it is, is black font on a white boxed background with lines to make it look like shattering glass. This is really relevant to the genre it is selling by which is punk, rock. The ! Creates emphases on the word and makes it stand out. The aroma perspiring from the masthead is loud and destructive.

This is the masthead being presented on a copy of Kerrang! As you can see it has been dropped behind the subject and doesn't contain any other information

such as the date.

This is the New Musical Express logo and it has been abbreviated to NME. I think this has worked really well if your title name is more than 2 – 3 words long. What they have done though is printed the whole name in small underneath. The font is bold with embroidery. Also very simple but effective.

They have put this masthead on the corner because of its shape and size, this looks a lot nicer than it would if it were

to be in the middle. It has also been layered behind the subject.

This thing that stands out most about this masthead is the pure simplicity of the single letter. It doesn't get more blunt than that. The beauty of this is how memorable it is. The vibrant red background, flairs of the white letter. Stands out well and is easily distinguishable among other magazines.

Here the logo has also been placed on the corner because of its shape and

prominence. This time however it has been placed in front of the subject. It is

also very simple with no added information.

This magazine is called VIBE and the difference with this is the colour changes depending on the colour scheme of each individual magazine. This can come quite useful when you want it to fit in a look stylish.

The masthead is set behind the subject and is majorly being covered but

because of the centring and spacing the word is still distinguishable. The colour is

a light blue because is matches the colour scheme of the magazine.

My Ideas

After looking at different styles of mastheads and different types of vocabulary use I have found that I want to create a simple masthead with no profound logo. Something in-between the VIBE magazine and NME.

• The Edge• Plec

• RR Republic• Sound

These are different titles I have brain stormed. The one I like the most is RR Republic, the RR stands for Radical Rock. This could work really well because through expansion of products or headers and footers in the magazine itself it can be shortened to RR.

This was the final use of the masthead that I created. As you can see I used the idea from NME to have to abbreviation which stands for “Radical Rock”. The full name of the magazine is Radical Rock Republic, but what I have done is dropped the Republic and abbreviated Radical Rock to just RR. This way I can have a stand out logo that is memorable for the audience.

The masthead for the magazine has been tilted to suite the theme of the shapes and it works really well, what I have also done is changed the colour of part of the letter. I feel this is a nice touch which brings out the start of the masthead itself and raises attention.