Creating My Masthead

For my masthead I decided to experiment with a few names before properly deciding on a title. These names were:

Alternative Rock
Indie Weekly
AR

I chose to use AR as my title as it is an acronym for Alternative Rock which is one of the key genres of my magazine. I also chose this as it is short and memorable, similar to style models such as Q and NME.

I did not want my masthead to be complexed, I aimed for something slightly basic and retro. By using an on-line masthead website and experimented with a certain set of titles using my AR branding.


I first went onto www.freeurbanfonts.com and looked into mastheads that fitted my indie rock genre.

I feel that these two titles seem a bit more swayed towards punk and Gothic music as suppose to alternative rock.

I liked these fonts as they seem more of an indie rock style typography however I felt the spacing was too large in between the font especially the masthead at the bottom of the page

I also considered these fonts (above) as they seemed classic and basic compared to the other fonts which was exactly the style I was aiming for which helped me select a certain few before I starting testing these as my masthead.

These were the fonts I had finally used to experiment as they all displayed certain individuality qualities. I liked the top one as it is very edgy and eccentric, The second one is basic but it also appears to be a bit corny. The third seems creative and artistic however lacked the alternative edge I was looking for. The final seemed in a block formation which is alternative however it struggled to connote a music magazine.

After testing all my final four covers I decided that despite all their individual qualities I actually used a Adobe Photoshop font as it was both basic and accessible which were the two key features and requirements which I felt were necessary.  This is an image of a draft cover with my masthead on it.