Magazine Mastheads: 'Kerrang!' and 'NME'

The genre for 'NME' magazine is mixed, because the magazine consists of music topics on; rock, indie, rap and hip-hop. The masthead colours are black, red and white, and the font is in bold upper case which helps it stand out. The masthead is also very neautral because they dont want their audience to think the magazine is for a certain type of music e.g (if the magazine had spikes or cracks, like 'Kerrang!' people would assume the magazine if of a rock genre). Also the colours of red, white and black are very unisex, unlike 'Smash Hits' magazine, which usually has a pink logo. When the magazine was first released in 1952, the logo was similiar to what it is now. Although the font is more curly and links to more 'pop' related music which was revelent at the time, the masthead is still in bold letters. This shows that when they changed the masthead (when the magazine started to print in colour) they still wanted people to recognise it but changed it to a bolder font because the music they wrote about was a lot more mixed than in 1952. The abreviated version of 'New Musical Express' to 'NME' also makes it more eyecatching, simpler to read, and looks nicer overall on the front cover.

The genre for 'Kerrang!' magazine is rock, which is definetley shown in the mastheads of both new and old covers. The first copy of 'Kerrang!', printed in 1981, is also very similar to the masthead on 'Kerrang!' magazine today. The font is tilted slighty, in a bright red to attract and also helps because there isnt a lot of colour on the front cover of the magazine. Like 'NME', because the magazine is so popular, when 'Kerrang!' decided to change the design of the masthead they still kept to the same style/font to make is easy to recognise by its target audience. Because of technology, the current 'Kerrang!' masthead has certain effects on it to make it more appealing to the target audience and to help them get an idea of what type of genre the magazine is for, but also to make it look better on the front cover. The masthead changed from a bright red to black/white, but is still eyecatching because of its boldness and the effects make it look like broken glass giving a messy 'grunge' effect. Although the mastheads didnt change much, they still give an effect and idea of what the kind of rock music there was at the time. The first masthead giving a 'glam rock' feeling, and the current masthead giving a punk rock feeling.