Masthead Brainstorm

The masthead of a magazine sets the standard for the entire magazine and also creates an opinion in the reader on the magazine and whether they would want to read it or not. Our magazine would appeal to our target audience, and would therefore need to contain aspects that would appeal to them. We created a brainstorm of potential mastheads in order to narrow down our ideas to a final decision. The options were varied, each trying to hit a certain target. Total Horror, whilst straightforward and powerful, it is to similar to an existing product, and therefore cannot be used. Now Horror, Movies 101, Box Office, Scene Stealer, Movie Galore and Blockbuster all seemed to be to cliche for our target audience. Frame was too ambiguous and could be mistaken for a photography magazine, as was Scene. This left us choosing between Shutter, Gore, and Shocker to choose from. Shocker seemed far too childish for our demographic, and so it was removed, however the choice between Gore and Shutter was more difficult. Gore would immediately connotate horror films, however Shutter encapsulates cinema as a whole. In the end, we decided to go with Shutter as it has a stronger connotation the film industry  and also provides us with a wide range of possibilities in regards to the design of the masthead. As Shutter is a film magazine, we decided to create a special Halloween edition to feature our film and focus on the genre specifically. This is so that we can play around with the fonts and colour schemes without having to adhere to codes and conventions as strictly as would be necessary with an average film magazine.