AS Media Studies

Foundation Portfolio: Music Magazines

Mastheads and Font Design

The masthead of a music magazine can be one of the most important selling points of the magazine. It can reflect the mood and attitude of the writers, the musical style or genre covered within its pages and the lifestyle of its target audience.

The words used in mastheads can simply be grouped in word classes such as a nouns, verbs or nouns and adjectives together. Sometimes they may contain prepositions (words like out, in, up, over) They may contain a play on words, or a pun, or are they are often within the lexical field of music, or are words associated with music. Often they use onomatopoeia or words derived from sounds. They may also be acronyms, for example New Musical Express is abbreviated to NME. Very often, they use slang, like ‘Vibe’ and ‘Mojo’.

An example:

Metalhammer

In this example “Metal’ is an adjective describing a hard, shiny object. It is also within the lexical field of musical culture, as metal is a genre of music. Hammer is a noun, naming a heavy, industrial object. Therefore the compound noun ‘Metalhammer’ when used as a masthead attracts fans of heavy metal music.

Consider each of the mastheads below and make notes on:

1. Word classes used (nouns/verbs/adjectives)

2. Lexical field, or how they give connotations of musical culture

3. How the masthead attracts the target audience, with the use of Sans Serif or Serif fonts, size, letter spacing, colours or any other design features.

Q magazine uses a play on words within its mast head. For example, it symbolises an artist’s cue to start singing, a queue to get into a gig etc. By the ‘Q’ being in a serif font it shows that the magazine is formal an aimed at a older target audience.

The mast head KERRANG! is in onomatopoeia, the use of a bold sans serif font edited with a smashing effect makes the magazine seem exciting. The mast head mimics the sound of an electric guitar, symbolising the music featured within the magazine.

Task 2: In pairs, try to think of as many words as you can which are related to music. Write them below. They can be to do with genres, styles, musical trends or the equipment you listen to music on. Try to use words which are contemporary, or words which you use when talking about the music you enjoy, particularly slang.

e.g.: Download, Soundwave, Urban, i-NDIE, RnB, Dub Step, UK Funky, Grindcore, Thrash, Punk, Electro, Techno, Drum and bass, Tenor, Alto, Soprano, Bass, Orchestra, Bhangra, Classical, Baroque, Irish jig, Reel, Boogie woogie, Jazz, R’n’B, Alternative, Metal, Riverdance

Choose at least three examples and write them using use font styles and colours which match the style projected by the word. For example the compound noun:

Download

in a plain sans serif ariel font is much better when capitalised:

DOWNLOAD

DOWNLOAD

using OCR A Std Bold

DOWNLOAD

With condensed spacing and coloured red, 36pt

Task 3. Choose your best examples and create your mastheads in photoshop

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