Production: Masthead Experimentation

Here I am experimenting with potential masthead designs for my music magazine. My masthead colour depends on the photograph I use for my front cover as I want the front cover to scream continuity by having appropriate colours (I want my masthead colour to feature on the model somewhere; clothes, makeup, props, etc...)

For the first potential masthead, I chose to use the font Orator Std in Medium. I changed the colour to black as this was the most neutral colour I could think of that would go with just about any colour background (image). I then changed my tracking to 100 (in thousandsth of an em) and changed the weight of the text to 5 pt. The tracking "pushed" the letters apart and made a bigger 'gap' between them. I did this as I was thinking about the style of the WIRE's masthead. Their masthead is fairly simple, a one worded, capitalised title that has around 2.5 centimeters of space between the lettering.

The second listed masthead is my favourite; I like the bright blue colour as it's bold and connotes freshness - if I were to use this masthead and colour, I would try to incorporate this bold colour into my photography. The font for this masthead is Tw Cen MT Condensed Extra Bold in Regular, although I changed the tracking to 40 and the weight to 0.

My (close) second favourite masthead design is the fourth (and fifth), they're the same font (Candara) and text size (117 pt), just in two different colours. The first colour is an earthy green, like teal; C=82, M=20, Y=50, K=33. The second colour is a 'muddy' pink; C=0, M=84, Y=19, K=39.