Magazine Title Fonts - Part Two

As I said previously, I decided that I would try having a go at making metallic text for my title, as the finished design I saw in a tutorial looked like it would be suitable for my music magazine. The first design used the Oceania font, and I applied several effects to it to make it look like liquid metal. It ended up looking quite nice, but I felt that the texture was rather too ornate. None of the other music magazine titles I looked at had textured fonts for their titles; the closest was Kerrang! which had white lines cutting across it. The next design still retained a definite metallic feel to it, but it did so without needing the overly complicated texture present in the first design. I managed to do this by applying a multitude of different effects to it which made it appear like a shiny silvery type thing. I still didn't feel however, that this was yet good enough to be used for the masthead  of my magazine. I therefore began to look for fonts that would be more appropriate to use with a metallic effect such as the one I had used, and hence came across the font Decade. For the third design I applied the exact same effects as for the previous design but changed the font to Decade; this gave the whole design a more rugged feel which I liked a lot. At this point I began to question whether using silver coloured-text was really a good idea, as I felt that it may well end up clashing with any coloured photographs. I decided that I wanted to experiment with using black text while still retaining the metallic effect that was present in the previous designs, as I could possibly use a system of different coloured mastheads similar to the one I mentioned in this post. For the fourth design I again used Decade, and managed to keep a metal look by applying an outer and inner glow and also a bevel and emboss effect. I actually really liked how these effects turned out, but now felt that the font Decade was less fitting. I then decided to use the same effects for the fifth design but changed the font back to Oceania, and finally ended up with something that I thought would be perfect for my music magazine title.

Magazine Title Fonts - Part One

The type of font used for the title of a music magazine is very important, as it is one of the main factors that contributes to a magazine's brand identity and house style. Therefore I had to put a lot of work into choosing a suitable font. I decided that to get a more unique-looking font I should search for some on the internet rather than just using the default ones already on Photoshop. The main website I used to look for fonts was dafont, but I also looked on some other websites like fontstock and urbanfonts. I searched through the different categories and then downloaded and installed any fonts that I thought would be appropriate so that I could sample them in Photoshop.

To the left is the first page of title designs that I came up with. I tried a variety of different fonts and style effects on Photoshop and came up with eight very different designs. The first design used the font Arista 2.0 and I applied a variety of Photoshop effects to it. Despite liking it, it definitely wasn't in keeping with the type of music magazine I wanted to create, rather it seemed to me to have some sort of superhero aesthetic. The second design used the font Gill Sans and I applied a rainbow colour effect to it using the gradient overlay tool. I decided that the font was too thin and boring to be used and that the rainbow colours were overly exciting, and just came across as childish and tacky. The third design was made with Copperplate Gothic Bold and I applied a coloured drop shadow to it to see how it would look. And the result was... that it looked repulsive. I decided that the font, colours and effects would all be inappropriate for my music magazine. The fourth design is different to the rest, as rather than keep it as text I rasterized it so that I could create a splatter effect like the one in this video. Unfortunately it didn't look as good as I had hoped, and it was at this point I decided to try and keep the colour schemes simpler, and also that I realised the title would look better with the letters spaced out from each other. The next title design used the font Alte Haas Grotesk, and I applied several effects to it to make it look how it does. I must say that I do quite like how this one turned out, despite it not being suitable for my music magazine. One problem I had with it is that it was too thin, so for the last three designs I used a larger font. The font used for the last three was Oceania, and I used it for all three as I decided it was the best I had seen so far. It had just the right weight and was simple enough to not look gaudy, while not being at all boring. I tried a variety of effects and colours on the three designs but didn't end up with something I was happy enough with to use on my magazine. It was at this point I came across a tutorial to create metal-type text using Photoshop, and thought that I'd have a go at creating something similar.

Analysis of Music Magazine Mastheads

Kerrang!'s masthead is in a sans-serif font and is all in capital letters, which gives out an easygoing feeling. The fact that the letters are all spaced closely together also add to this feeling of being cool and informal. The exclamation mark at the end is a unique feature of this magazine's title (none of the other titles have it) and it has the effect of inducing excitement; one can imagine a guitar being strummed with a "kerraaang" sound and this also tells the reader that the magazine will be compiled mainly of rock music, as opposed to rap or RnB. A sort of texture effect has been applied to the outside of the letters so that the colour appears to be spilling out, yet again emphasising the colloquialism of the magazine. The white lines that cut through the masthead add to the aforementioned feeling of colloquialism as they give an impression of "not caring" by cutting through randomly and also of speed which shows excitement.

Mojo's masthead is fairly simplistic compared to to Kerrang!'s, as the font does have the various effects applied to it and it doens't have an exclamation mark. This gives it a more subtle, calm feeling which could indicate that it is for an older audience. A drop shadow effect has been applied which allows for the masthead to be read easily over different colours and pictures; Kerrang!'s masthead doesn't need this as it usually has a white box placed behind it.

NME's masthead also has a fairly simplistic layout in comparison to its fellow weekly magazine, Kerrang!, but is still more ornate than Mojo. The red colour attracts attention, and this is then surrounded by the contrasting colours of white and black which further makes it stand out. An inner shadow effect has been applied to the red part of the text which gives the masthead some depth and therefore makes it look less plain. Going by the masthead alone I probably wouldn't be able to discern that NME is a magazine for young teenagers. However, perhaps the use multiple colours are the indicator.

Looking at the masthead for Q, one can definitely tell that it is for older readers and is unlikely to contain naughty words and a letters page that spell-checker would malfunction upon scanning. The white on red stands out for reasons described at the bottom of this page and the top of this page. A drop shadow effect has been applied to the Q which gives the masthead depth and makes it look simplistic but not boring. The tail of the Q is curved and finishes in a point on both sides; I'm not really sure about the significance of this but it does make it look rather stylish.

Most distinctively from the other mastheads, Uncut has a serif font as opposed to a sans-serif one. It also seems to have been beveled which makes the letters look bolder and more impacting. No other effects have been applied, but one can see that this is also a more mature masthead and from that one can assume that the magazine's content will be more mature too. Also, as I mentioned before, the font is all white which means it can easily be changed so that it may appear clearer on a particular background.

Since I aim to make a more mature monthly magazine I will try to use what I learnt and make a mature looking masthead. I will also experiment with a variety of more excitable fonts though, as it will give me practice and I may end up finding something suitable that wasn't anything like what I had originally thought it would be.

Research on Music Magazine Mastheads

Before starting to design my own magazine masthead, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at some real life ones to get a better idea about the codes and conventions involved. And so, pictured left are the title designs of what I previously said I considered to be the main five UK music magazines. I will analyse each of these mastheads and keep in mind the designs when beginning the creation process of my own masthead.

I noticed that Uncut and Mojo have variations of their mastheads based on colour, so that if their usual colour (white) doesn't look good with a particular front cover photo they can change it. I have included two examples that I managed to find of covers which don't use the usual masthead colour. I could possibly make use of a similar system if I choose to have a masthead which consists only of text rather than one that is more image-like, like NME, Q and Kerrang!.

Planning for Preliminary Task

A while ago I began planning my preliminary task, which is to design and produce the front cover and a mock-up contents page of a new school magazine. I set myself the following list of planning tasks:

1. Decide on a title
2. Take photos.
3. Do rough layout of of cover
4. Get information about school events (which can be referenced on my cover)
5. Choose font/s

Title

The first thing on my list was to decide upon a title appropriate for use on my magazine's cover. This may seem like a slightly insignificant task, but the title actually plays a large part in determining the layout and aesthetic structure of the cover. It is also essential that the font used in the magazine is complementary of the title; for example, a school magazine entitled "Happy Wilmo" would look strange if the font used was dark and Gothic.
My first step in coming up with a effective title was to make a list of possibilities., which is as follows:

• WGSB Mag
• Weekly Wilmington
• Wilmington Weekly
• Weekly Wilmo
• Wilmington Mag4Skool
• Wilmag
• Wilmington's Termly Times
• Wacky Wilmington
• Wilmington Knights
• WGSBlast
• Wilmington Grammar Snapshot
• Wilmington Wheeze
• Wilmington Wagger
• Wilmington Wailer
• Wilmington Woof

I surveyed people about which title they thought was best; specifically I surveyed students at my school, as they are the target audience. I personally asked 43 students which title they thought would be most appropriate for the school magazine, and then collected the results to find which were most popular. I found that the two most popular titles were WGSBlast and Weekly Wilmo; I therefore decided to use WGSBlast because I personally prefer it and it is also more unique than Weekly Wilmo, as other people in the class had magazine names that were fairly similar to it.

Photos

I decided the next thing I should do was to take photos that could be included on my cover, as I couldn't yet choose my fonts since I would need something that complemented my picture. I went around school taking pictures of different students in different places /situations, such as the science labs, the computer rooms, the library, the school entrance and the school grounds. I took a wide range of photos, amounting to 103 in total, and doing so allowed me to have more photos than I needed which allowed me to have more of a choice. It also meant that I could have photos to include on the contents page. I have uploaded some of the pictures I took to give a better idea about the effort I put in, and also so that the people who I didn't include on my cover still feel their posing was worthwhile. I asked people, including my teacher, for advice regarding which picture they thought would be most appropriate  for the cover of a school magazine. It was widely agreed that the photo I had taken of Glenn in the library (shown above) was the best one, and I decided to use it.
The next thing I had to do was edit the photo in Adobe Photoshop. The first thing I did was remove Glenn's spots with the spot removing tool, as I believed that people would not like a magazine cover with someone spotty on it. I then decided to make the background of the picture black and white, while keeping Glenn and the book he's holding in colour. To apply this effect I desaturated the whole photo and then used the history brush to re-colour Glenn and the book.

Rough Layout of Cover

The next thing I had to do was a rough layout of my cover, so that I had an idea of what to include and where to include it. this was useful as it let me mess around with things to see what looked best, and as it was only a rough plan it didn't matter if things went wrong. The layout I did is to the right and it is interesting to compare it to how my cover actually ended up.

Information on School events

I had already decided to make the main headline on the cover be about the school library, since I was using the photo of glenn in the library and the story had to be relevant. However, I also had to research school events so I could get some ideas on possible headlines. I did this by looking over past school newsletters and by asking teachers about any events that are coming up. In all honesty this didn't end up being very useful and I mostly made up the headlines that I used.

Choosing Fonts

This took a bit of time, as I went through each of the fonts installed on Photoshop to see which was most suitable. For the magazine title and main headline I used the font Kitty Katt and for the lesser writing I usually used variations of Lucinda Sans. I made the font colour for the title blue as it is in keeping with the school badge, which I also wanted to include. For the main headline I used yellow as it stands out from the largely desaturated background.