• Barthes – French literary theorist / philosopher. Theoised the codes theory (Hermeneutic code), the way a story is told without revealing all the facts
• Pierce – American philosopher, investigated how language is a way of connecting meaning to different signs, ICONIC, INDEXICAL, SYMBOLIC
• Saussure – Swiss linguist / semiotican, theorised that the principle of language is a system of signs, each sign is composed of signifier and signified
• Semiotics – The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation
• Sign – An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.
• Signifier – An object/thing (comes from Saussure)
• Signified – The meaning of a signifier (comes from Saussure)
• Icon – A sign that has a direct link to its object
• Index – A sign that has an indirect link to its object
• Symbol – Has a random or arbitrary link based on a shared knowledge
• Code – A system of words, letters, figures, or symbols used to represent others
• Dominant Signifier – Most important sign, main image
• Anchorage – A sign that fixes the meaning
• Ideology – Set of ideas, beliefs and values
• Paradigm – A specific group of words/things, which can be used interchangeably all with the same meaning
• Syntagm – A series of signs that all work together eg a sentence
• Signifcation – Giving an object its purpose/meaning (process of making meaning)
• Denotation – The object (Barthes)
• Connotation – The meaning (Barthes)
• Myth – Ideas created by connotations
• Radical text – Challenges the dominant ideology
• Reaction text – Supports the dominant ideology

What is media ?

Media is a form of mass communication and is used to inform and influence people’s actions. Forms of media include : songs, videos, photos, magazines, newspapers, these could be used for persuasion. 

What is media studies?

Media studies is the study of different types of media. It also shows you how to use editing software, such as photoshop or video editing software.

What is the point of media studies?

The point of media studies is to teach students how to use editing software. Media also teaches students to appreciate the work and effort put into media, such as advertising and music videos. 

What am I interested in?

During my time of study media, I am interested in learning how to use editing software properly such as photoshop. I am also interested in learning more about how music videos are produced. During this course I also want to learn how media affects businesses and how they can persuade people to but their products.

Iconic signs:

• People
• Guns
• Hand
• War
• Keyboard

Indexical signs:

• All logos
• PC gamer (shows that they’re pc games)
• Guns

Symbolic signs:

• Colours – Orange, green , black, white, red
• Zombie (hand)
• Words
• Letters

After receiving this task, the first thing I considered was which platform (PC or console), I would make my magazine cover for, I decided to go for a PC magazine. To convey this idea, I found an image saying, ‘PC GAMER’ and an image of the, ‘WASD’ keys, these two things make it obvious to the people looking at this magazine exactly what they’re looking at so they can decide if it’s right for them. The next thing I decided to do was to come up with a slogan to try to draw in the buyer’s attention and really capture the theme for the magazine, this slogan was ‘Get your game on’, I chose this because I believe that It can help to encourage people and motivate them to pick up gaming or re-connect with it if they have lost touch with it. 

The next thing I did was think about the layout for the magazine cover, I decided that putting lighter colours such as white and orange over a darker base (black/grey). I chose this because I thought it would make the colours on the magazine pop and help to catch the buyer’s eye. After deciding on the initial layout and colour scheme, I then decided which games to show on the front cover of the magazine, to do this I thought about whether I wanted the magazine to be about a specific type of game, or whether I wanted it to showcase a variety of different games and different genres of games, I decided to include a variety of different genre of games in the magazine cover because I wanted to be inclusive and try to catch as many people’s interests as possible, the genres in the magazine are, shooting games (COD,battlefield, CSGO), battle royale (PUBG), and horror (Left 4 dead 2, Dead by daylight). 

When composing the magazine cover, I wanted to show a character shooting across the page, however this wasn’t possible to convey the way I wanted to, so instead I then decided to put the logos of the games. I didn’t want the magazine cover to look too digital (rows of pictures), because people want to see originality, and I wanted to be more artistic and less boring, so I decided that making some of the pictures/logos overlap with each other was a good idea to show this.  

To summarise, I made a list of different things I could include in this magazine cover to see what things I could come up with, in order to get inspiration for this I went online and looked at other gaming magazine’s to see what they did and I tried to make it look as professional as I could without making it look like I just copied someone else’s work. I tried my best to make an eye catching magazine cover that wasn’t boring and turn it into something that someone would actually buy and look at if they were interested in gaming.