Pre-production - Masthead Designs

Design 1

For this design, I adjusted the tracking of each individual letter of "Playlist"to make it slightly touching any characters beside it. This creates an eye-catching yet simple design, but if I were to use it, I would need to conduct research to see how quickly my audience is able to read what is written as it could be difficult to read.

I experimented with a variety of colour combinations to see if the masthead would still be effective and not look out of place. This is important as the magazine would usually feature a different image on the cover of each issue, so the colour of the masthead may have to be altered to still be visible to readers and not clash with the cover image.

Design 2

This variation of the masthead takes inspiration from the logo for "Q" magazine. It would be placed in the top/left third of the page, allowing for more space for design features such as cover-lines and puffs. The triangle in the square resembles a play-button, creating a link with music, however, this symbol is more frequently associated with online video content, such as YouTube videos, which could create confusion.

Design 3

This design takes inspiration from Design 1, but this time I used a different font, "Lemon Milk", and removed the tracking between the letters. This font appears to be more modern than the font I used in Design 1, however, it is thinner and therefore less eye-catching. The slimmer design of the font would also make it difficult for the masthead to stand out to potential readers when placed on a magazine rack. In addition to this, the font is very similar to the font used for the masthead of Empire magazine, which could cause confusion and also not make the magazine stand out to potential readers.