Pre-production Planning - Revised Masthead

Upon sketching flatplan designs for the cover page and considering my previous decisions regarding the masthead, I decided to reconsider it's design. The factors that concerned me ranged from the communication and translation of the design to my audience as well as the visual impact which the masthead created. On reflection, I feel that the masthead's link to the music element of the magazine was also unclear, with the more grungier origins of the Alternative Rock genre being suppressed by the quite 'pretty' serif font. Whilst I really like the aesthetics of the original masthead, I think the lack of clear relevance to the genre is unsuitable, as is the general design.

Despite this, I am conscious of the inclusion of an end symbol or blob at the end of the double page spread article. I intend to translate the circular shape of the original masthead into the revised version for this purpose.

Upon adding text to the logo, I was mainly inspired by the font combinations I had been testing for the double page spread. Whilst I chose the Oswald and Open Sans combination, I still really admired the Roboto and Roboto Slab pair, as the variations of the same font will help highlight the fluidity of the design.

Continuing on from this, I mainly wanted the 'A' to be the statement of the masthead, so by placing any text to the right of the letter on the same line diverts any focus to the bolder letter. Previously, I had toyed with the inclusion of 'Mag' with the masthead, forming 'Alt Mag'. On hindsight, I don't think this portrays a more maturer magazine which is aiming to be modern, and suits more of a gossip-lead publication. Yet whenever I say Alt aloud, I naturally follow it with the word magazine, forming 'Alt Magazine'. Because of this, I want to challenge myself further to include this element.

When resizing the original pointy triangular version (bottom variation), I found it almost too large and quite distracting. Once again referring back to previous sketches, I decided to modify the masthead to a rectangular end by simply overlaying and subtracting a rectangle onto the top of the A. After making this slight change and placing it with the same text arrangement, I found the A integrated with the overall masthead much more effectively.

I was concerned that the inclusion of the word 'magazine' would prove too long, however I was pleasantly surprised with how fluid the overall combination was. By placing the text in all capitals, this meant that the x-height of the text would remain constant, maintaining clear horizontals.

After making more subtle adjustments of width and heights of the fonts, I conducted another experiment. I went about 6ft away from the computer, and tried to read the masthead across the room. Whilst I could make out some of the bolder shapes from the 'Alt', the magazine part was by far the clearest to read. Evidently, I need the name of the publication to be the most obvious, so I have made the decision to refine the masthead further and limit it to just 'Alt'.

As well as possessing clear aforementioned links to the Alternative Rock genre, the bold sans-serif font holds connotations of modernism as well as being able to be read from afar. I am also pleased that the 'A' letter was entirely designed by myself by hand, giving a personal link to the design.