Masthead Research

Q Magazine’s masthead is a single letter rather than a name that may connote a genre, which is quite unconventional compared to magazines such as Rocksound or Kerrang!. However, it is still similar as it is simple but eye-catching. The masthead is in bold white font against a red background, with the catch line “Discover great music” in capitals underneath. This implies that the magazine features a lot of new bands or bands that aren’t very mainstream, making the shade of red chosen in this sense look quite sophisticated and classic.

Having a single letter rather than a word may work in their favour as it most likely won’t have any main images that overlap onto it, meaning that their masthead will be easy to spot and will stand out against everything else on the page. It would also be easy for the audience to see and recognise, helping them create a more iconic brand identity amongst all the others.


NME’s masthead is similar to Q’s in how it is quite short, and the colours black, red and white are typical of these types of magazines. The masthead is in bold capital letters with a white outline to help it stand out on the page against other fonts or images.

There isn’t much to communicate the genre to the audience other than the colours, although when said phonetically “N-M-E” sounds like the word “enemy”, which sounds quite aggressive and these kinds of words are often used by magazines to connote genres such as rock/metal. This may or may not be NME’s intention, but I still find it quite significant in seeing how magazines use different codes and conventions to convey themes.

Kerrang!’s masthead is in a bold white font against a black background, with little letter spacing. I think they may have chose white for their masthead as this means it is easily changeable if they want a certain colour scheme for that issue without readers thinking much of it, and it won’t contrast too much with the rest of the page or main images used. It is in capital letters, which seems to be common for this genre of magazine. There is an addition of scratch/crack lines going through it, which could be to represent the genre of rock/metal music, but also makes Kerrang!’s logo more their own and different from others.

 

Rocksound’s logo is in a bold white font and capital letters. Their logo also has what looks like a stamp mark on the R, with the text “Rocksound TV” around it. I think that like Kerrang!, Rocksound have used an extra graphic here to give them more of a brand identity and to make it more unique. The name itself, Rocksound, connotes immediately the genre of music the magazine features to the target audience.