Music Magazine Masthead

My Music magazine is called Sticks + Stones, and due to this name my masthead needs a style that can be easily associated with classic rock, i created 4 variations of the same masthead the only similarity of them is that for the word sticks i have made them out of drum sticks or actual sticks apart from one masthead which does not share these similarities, variation 1 has the "+" in Sticks + Stones apart from one masthead which does not share these similarities

Variation 1 (Image Bellow) I used an image of a drum stick that I acquired from the internet to form the word "Sticks" and the "+" of my magazines name. I did this using simple manipulation tools in Photoshop for example I rotated, scaled and duplicated.

the main reason I decided against using this masthead is because the stylization of the word "Stones" I felt it seemed too cartoon like for a professional classic rock magazine.

Variation 2 (Image Below) is similar to Variation 1 apart from i used the warp tool in Photoshop to make the word "sticks" seem more natural and easier to read, the block like style of variation 1 made it hard to read.

Variation 3 (Image Below) this variation was my favourite because it was easy to read and still related to the genre of the magazine and the title of the magazine.

Variation 4 (Image Below) in this variation i used a font that i acquired from www.dafont.com the font is called stickchop and the main reason this font stood out to me from the rest is because of the similaritys to bamboo which is related to the word "Sticks". the other font used in this masthead was called "stonehenge" which is what i got from the same website as the "stickchop" font, i felt that this font did not seem as rock orientated as i like and did not relate as well to the magazine as Variation 3.

after creating these 4 different variations for my masthead i felt that variation 3 was best suited for my magazine because it looked more rock appropiate and coresponds with the words in the title "Sticks + Stones".