Masthead AnalysisIn this I look at a range of Mastheads and comment on the

colours, font and the meaning behind them.

Billboard is the masthead for billboard music magazine. It uses a bold black font which is similar to Berlin Sans FB. Some of letters are connected while others are not. The letters that are connected stand out more than those that are not. This may be because the letters that are connected involve a circle. For example: b, o, a and d, and these are all filled in with colour. Doing this makes the masthead stand out more and also makes it more vibrant. As well as this it is also unique, as I have never seen anything similar to this before for a masthead. An actual billboard is a giant board that stands out and tries to grab peoples attention. Knowing this tells us what billboard magazine is trying to do. What I mean is that they are trying to make the font black by using a dark colour, but they use bold colours in the middle of letters to try make it stand out and grab peoples attention. The whole point of a masthead is to make someone look at it and make them pick it up, which is exactly what Billboard magazine has done. I personally really like this masthead, because I love how they have filled in certain letters with bold bright colour. I would defiantly take this into consideration when making my magazine.

Rolling Stone is the masthead for the Rolling Stone music magazine. The font is very similar to Monotype Corsiva, however is it not exactly the same. This font uses Serifs, and this is something that you don’t see a lot of in music magazine, mainly because you can make the magazine look amazing with them or it can look not so good. The colour scheme is very simple. They use a red font, with a white outline and a black shadow. I find that these three colours (red, white and black), work really well together and can help give and indie vibe, which is what I am aiming for. The phrase Rolling Stone relates to the phrase, ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’. What I mean by this is that if you keep going then overtime you will gather wealth and you will get what you have worked so hard for. So the idea for using it as a masthead is very good idea, because it implies that starting off the magazine they were not as popular, but as the years went on they carried on doing the magazine and soon enough it got very popular. I think that this is a nice masthead, however I think I would want to modernise it a bit because I feel like it can feel a bit old, even though it is an iconic masthead.

Q is the masthead for Q music magazine. This is a very simple masthead as it only includes one letter, and two colours. The use of red and white work really well together, as I think those two colours helps the magazine give it its indie/rock vibe. Having the letter ‘Q’ in a red box is helps the magazine stand out, because red can be quite a bold colour to use. That must be one of the reasons why they use it. The font used for the letter Q is similar to Adobe Garamond pro bold. There is no actual definition for Q, but it could stand for either one of the following words: Question and/or Quality. It could stand for quality because the magazine could have a high ‘quality’ about it. And we know it is high quality because it is a very popular music magazine. I like how they have taken the simplistic route by using only used one letter, however I don’t think that this is what I want to try achieve.

Vibe is the masthead for Vibe music magazine. This is quite a simple masthead as it only uses one colour, however is it very bold, as it stands out from the page. The font used it similar to Eras Bold ITC. As I said before only one colour is used for this masthead. The use of the word ‘Vibe’ generally suggests an emotional state of someone, and in this case it is all to do with music, so it could suggest how someone feels about music. Looking at the magazines that vibe does they all have a pop/ rap theme, so that must be the type of vibe that they are going for. Out of all the mastheads that I have looked at so far, this is my least favourite. This may be because there is not enough colour in it, or it could be because of the type of music it is used for. But on the other hand it is a good masthead because it is bold and stands out from the page.

NME is the masthead for the NME music magazine. It uses a bold red font which is very similar or almost the same to Ariel Black. This font does not uses serifs, mainly because that is not the type of vibe that the magazine is trying to have. Serifs are generally used in more fancy writing and therefore are generally used for the very popular magazine that can pull it of. Furthermore, when u say NME it sounds like you are saying enemy. This could imply that the magazine is an enemy to every other magazine, which could also tell us that other magazines should look out for this magazine, because they are a very good music magazine. Using a red bold colour is a good way of grabbing peoples attention, because it stands out so much from the page. And the whole point of a masthead is to grab someone's attention, and that’s exactly what NME have done. My own opinion of this masthead is a good one. I quite like this, because it is simple and straight to the point. I also like how it could represent the word enemy.

Kerrang is a world popular rock music magazine. The font for this masthead is quite an unusual one because it looks like cracked glass or something similar to that. The font is similar to Stencil, but it is not exactly the same. It was quite hard to find one that was like this font because it seems to have a spray-paint effect, and there are not many fonts on PowerPoint that do spray-paint styled fonts. The colours used are simple but effective. Black and white are the two colours or shades that stand out from each other, which is why most magazines like to use them. The use of the cracked glass in the font gives it that edgy/rock feel, which is what the magazine is aiming for. The term ‘Kerrang’ is generally used to describe the noise made when playing a power chord on a distorted electric guitar. This explains why the music magazine is all to do with hard rock and heavy metal music. Personally I am not a huge fan of this type of font because it is not the style that I am aiming for, however I quite like the cracked glass effect.