Common Conventions - Mastheads

Before building my newspaper I needed to conduct research into similar products. Jones, 1993, said about planning and research, 'a process needed for problem solving; not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability possessed by most people.'


The masthead anchors the ideologies behind the newspaper. For example The Financial Times mastheads typography is plain and bold, allowing no room for mistaking that this paper has a target audience of working to upper class people. Below I will analyse a selection of mastheads to gain some idea of my own mastheads graphology: 

The Sun uses only two colours to keep the graphology of the masthead simple but eye catching. The colour white connotes innocence while the red contrasts this since it connotes anger, passion, and danger. Perhaps the designer wanted to represent the reader by the colour white, being innocent of news, and the red to represent the paper bringing the passion to sharing news. Or perhaps there is a political ideology underling here, since red is the colour for labour. 

The typography used is bold and the 'U' and 'N' look as if they have been flipped which creates a sense of repetition and symmetry. Overall the masthead screams out at you on the front cover which is something my own masthead needs to do to attract attention from buyers. When designing my own masthead I think I might use similar typography because it does not distract the reader from the rest of the front page, but like The Suns masthead it can be easily recognised. 

This is my local paper and the masthead is massive turn off for young people. The colour black connotes seriousness and formality which means that most young people will turn away from this. Young people nowadays want news presented in an informative but informal way which is why I will be keeping this in mind when creating my own product. The typography is in old script, which screams out that this newspaper is under the prescriptivist heading, and they want to stay in the past and shy away from change. This will stop young people from buying this because teenagers want to move with the times and keep up to date with technology, unlike the Cornish Guardian. My own masthead will steer well clear of any conventions that this masthead uses. My colours will be bright and the typography will be more 'modern'. 

The 'i' masthead is interesting because the newspaper is a smaller version of the Independent, and therefore should carry the same connotations. The lettering connotes up to dateness since is links into iPods etc and therefore shows that this newspaper is keen to keep up with the on going surge of new technologies. The lower case shows that the paper isn't as formal as other papers, which is what teenagers want and therefore is very successful with its target audience. The bite-size news that is a main feature of the i newspaper  The colour red can connote danger, passion, anger, love, lust, and courage. Perhaps the paper wanted the colour red to also represent technology and up to dateness. The eagle flying across the dot carrying the scroll anchors that fact that this paper is connoted to The Independent. The block font shows that this paper is strong and unbending to conformities of other papers. My masthead could also follow these conventions.

The colour black again connotes seriousness and formality and again young people will possibly not read this paper, even though that this is free. The font however, can be said to be seen as young, and because it's bold, stands out from the front cover. This masthead is something I will be using when creating my own because I like the typography, and I think it will draw young people to read my product, though I will not use the colour black. The location 'London' is smaller than the rest of the masthead because this is a free paper given away in the streets of London. It still needs to be there however because it gives the newspaper a sense of regional identity. This is key when building my paper, though I do not think I will include 'Cornwall' in the masthead, more like a slogan.