Masthead Experiments

 To try to create the best masthead that I possibly could I decided to experiment with different styles and tutorials to create a piece which experiments with techniques and ideas concerning mastheads. This wasn't going to be my final masthead however it allowed me to understand how I was going to portray my masthead.

 I started by creating a letter, in this case a letter 'T', and inserting it onto a photoshop document. At this point I hadn't decided on my masthead name so I chose something which was short and concise - something that I was hoping for my masthead name. 

 I then went onto inserting an interesting background image which makes the lettering stand out - something I will ensure that I do when I create my actual masthead. I then inserted words beginning with that letter alongside it - this portrays the kind of theme which I want to show through my masthead - I want to have an abbreviated masthead with the the understanding of it below or alongside.






I experimented with a variety of words with a variety of meaning an connotations so that I could paint a clear idea of where I wanted to go in terms of representation and also presentation.




I re-sized my words to fit into the shape and then cropped a section out of the letter to allow my words to fit in nicely - this gave it a professional feel. 

This masthead experiment will help me to portray my target audience to the best of my ability and it will also give me inspiration when creating my final masthead. I have explored the idea of abbreviations and I have finally decided to name my magazine 'AM' which stands for 'Alternative Music'. This name represents my target audience and also the common conventions of many music magazines. I will now go onto to develop my ideas concerning the masthead and create something which represents my target audience in a way that many of my competitors do. 


In addition to this research I have decided to experiment with other type styles as well as asking my audience what they think of the different fonts that I have chosen.

I chose the following four type faces - the first three are from free urban fonts and the final is 'Arial Bold' - and I asked 5 members of my target audience what they thought of them and which their favourite was. They then answered a survey monkey post for me. This, in turn, allows me to understand the conventions further and more in depth. 

The Survey Monkey shows that 4 out of the five target audience preferred the final masthead - this shows me that I need to use this for my magazine. By looking at different typefaces for my magazine I now understand in more depth which ones look good and which ones don't. I also understand why audience want to see and what they don't which is imperative for the success of my magazine. 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BJM6Y52

AM