Masthead Zine reprints Chicano newspapers’ mastheads as one-colour design artifacts

Two designers set out to archive the visual language of the Chicano Movement’s independent newspapers of the 1960s and 70s as design, not just history.

One vermilion ink on warm cream, pages that give each historic masthead gallery space, and a cover word assembled from mixed period type styles.

Mastheads reprinted chronologically with variants — EL CUHAMIL’s 1971–83 evolution, three CARACOL iterations — printed with Current Press at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi; 100 copies distributed to designers at the AIGA National Conference in Seattle.

Distributed at the 2022 AIGA National Conference; four years later Duttweiler is one of 35 exhibitors at PRINT 2026, Design Week Mexico’s graphic-design platform in Mexico City.

Masthead Zine, by designers Alexandria Canchola and Joshua Duttweiler, reprints the mastheads of Chicano Movement newspapers from the 1960s and 70s in a single vermilion red on warm cream stock. Its cover spells M-A-S-T-H-E-A-D in an assemblage of period styles — a Victorian serif M, a tilted circus-style A, a blackletter S, a brush-script h with a curling tail — working at once as a design statement and a specimen sheet.

Inside, each spread gives a handful of mastheads room to breathe: EL CUHAMIL’s evolution from 1971 to 1983 from boxed thumbnail to full-bleed white-on-red slab, CARACOL’s three iterations from prim serif to psychedelic bubble letters to a nautilus shell, LA GENTE’s geometric zigzag panels, ¡AHORA!’s medieval-meets-linocut edges. Duttweiler describes what the original designers faced: mastheads had to carry enough weight to command a crowded page, stay recognisable when partly obscured, and speak for their audience.

The zine was printed with Current Press at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in a limited edition of 100 copies in October 2022 and distributed to designers at the AIGA National Conference in Seattle — an audience for whom a masthead is a logo performing one of print’s hardest jobs. The restraint is deliberate: one colour, ample margins and short captions push all attention onto the letterforms.

The Chicano press fused post-Revolutionary mural art, indigenous motifs, Victorian display faces and Mexican street-brush script into a shared identity worth archiving as design.

A single-colour, image-free layout forces comparison of the letterforms instead of letting photography carry the page.

The zine format echoes the self-published, grassroots ethos of the original newspapers it documents.

A 100-copy run kept it a collectible object, aimed first at the profession’s core audience.

Restriction is the argument: one colour and no imagery forces readers to study the letterforms, proving under-resourced press design belongs in the design canon.

Four years on, the project reached an international stage: Duttweiler is among 35 exhibitors at PRINT 2026, Design Week Mexico’s graphic-design platform, running through the end of October in Mexico City. Scans of the zine reproduce the tactile original — ink texture in the solid reds, the warm cast of the paper, slightly rough type edges.