Gaming Front Cover and Statement of intent

ICONIC SIGNS: 

– Image of gaming character 

-image of game logo 

INDEXICAL SINGS: 

-Magazine title 

-World of Warcraft logo 

-GTA VI logo 

-Xbox logo 

SYMBOLIC SIGNS: 

-Titles  

-Subheadings 

-Puffs 

-Cover Line 

– Buzz words  

– Colour 

Media Studies Summer Task – gaming front cover 

The gaming magazine will be called ‘’Game Planet’’ as I am trying to make the magazine come off as well known and retro styled. For the masthead I intend to use 3D fonts that will look similar old school arcade game titles.For my front cover for a gaming magazine I plan to target the role playing games community as it is a broad audience which would perfectly suit a gaming magazine.To target the role playing games community, I have decided to use an image from the game ‘’Assassins Creed’’ as my main image in the front cover.The image will show a main protagonist from one of the many games that have been released by Ubisoft in a ‘’Leap of Faith’’ position.I am using this image because the exclusive story will be about the ‘’Assassins Creed’’ series and  its new and upcoming games .This will allow me to include other conventions around the image as it wont take up much space on the cover. I intend to make the front cover predominantly red and white as it will compliment the character shown in the main image as he is wearing darker clothing. In the bottom corners of the front cover I plan to include multiple puffs and teasers in order to affect a broader audience, for example I will include a second image with a game title saying ‘’World of Warcraft Classic’’ and a buzz word underneath it saying ‘’What to expect from the rebirth of Vanilla WoW’’.This will interest many people from the role playing games community as the re-release of the 2004 ‘’World of Warcraft’’ is a highly anticipated event happening this year in summer 2019.In the other bottom corner of the magazine cover I intend to use  a buzz word saying ‘GTA VI Update, What’s going on?’. This will interest a large amount of people as GTA has an enormous community Rockstars 2013s ‘GTA V’ has been expecting a sequel for a long time. I also intend to include a banner mentioning other gift codes for games, goodies and contests.The banner will say something along the lines of ‘free code to xbox live included inside!’’ . Along the sides of the front cover I plan to include conventions such as cover lines to feature what is inside the magazine. The cover lines will mention other new game releases such as ‘’Final Fantasy VII remastered,Diablo Immortal,Elder Scrolls VI etc’’, gaming competition and tournament stories such as ‘’Leage of Legends World Championships,World of Warcraft Arena 1v1,Dota 2 world championships’’ and guides to games like ‘’Getting started in Diablo III, Learning the ropes in Red Dead Redemption Online, Tips and Tricks for Assassin’s Creed – Odyssey’’ 

I have studied a variety of magazines already in the market place and have analysed and used the effective elements in my design, however adapting these conventions to enable mine to be unique having it’s own brand identity.   

I decided to use a house style or brand guideline of three consistently used colours to make my magazine stand out amongst the competition. I chose to stick to three main colours of red, black and yellow, which is my house style to make my brand recognisable and to give the magazine a uniform and organised look. As the audience is generally male I have steered away from traditional female colours such as pink. I chose contrasting colours for the background and text to make the text easier to see and to also make the magazine attract the interest of the buyer. 

In my research I found that gaming magazines are generally purchased by the 14-30 year old demographic, mainly male. I have therefore chosen colour schemes, text, images and enticing offers to appeal to this demographic. Therefore I aimed to advertise to a teen and young adult audience (14-30) and to attract this audience I used bright, contrasting colours and large, impactful fonts to catch attention to my magazine. I used large images to provide a visual representation of what the text I wrote was about (I used an image of a gaming keyboard next to the line on the cover about a list of the top 5 new keyboards. I also used an image of a gaming award next to the line about gaming award winners). I advertised a free download of a demo at the top of the magazine cover. These elements are present in many real magazines I analysed and they make the magazine more eye-catching to customers especially the free offer as it promises a bonus to buying the magazine that can sway a shopper slightly unwilling to buy.  

The requirements outlined a cover image and two other small images, which I have provided on the cover of the magazine and have also wrote lines about the contents of the magazine, conveyed by the images. The 5 cover lines, one main hook line and 4 minor lines link to the articles inside the magazine. I chose a unique and eye-grabbing title/masthead, “New World Gaming” with connotations of discovery and exploration which fits well as the magazine informs the buyer about new games and their quality. 

 With the main cover image I created a hook to the double-page spread that referenced the game and the genre of the game (e.g. “Will it Conquer Over All?” and “Invading the Market” are references about how the game is about war and conquest).  

My tagline is “The only magazine PC gamers need” which pinpoints how the magazine is about PC gaming and targets an audience of PC gamers. Standard industry practice is to include the price of the magazine and date of publishing near the masthead so I have analysed prices of gaming magazines and decided to set the price based on the prices of these magazines I researched. I believe that choosing this standard price will balance the cost of making the magazine and the revenue gained from selling it. 

Iconic signs: 

• Image of Keyboard  

• Image of Award 

• Image of Game 

• Image of Game characters 

Indexical signs: 

• Image of Game 

• Image of characters in the game 

• Colours of text 

• Colours of Background/images 

• Magazine Title 

Symbolic Signs: 

• Titles 

• Text 

• Colours 

• Date 

• Price 

• Tagline 

NEWSPAPERS: The first ever newspaper was printed in England, 1665.

MAGAZINES: Published in London in 1731, the first ever magazine was called “The Gentleman’s Magazine.”

RADIO: An Italian inventor invented the radio in 1895 as the first radio signal was sent and received.

CINEMA: First created by the Lumiere brothers in December 1895 in Paris.

ADVERTISING: Tobacco advertising was the first form of advertising in the 1920s.

TV: The television was first ever invented by an American inventor in 1927.

VIDEO GAMES: The first video game known to exist was created by a Physicist in 1958.

MUSIC VIDEOS: MTV was the first music company to air music videos, it was established in 1981.

INTERNET: First invented in 1983 by two computer scientists.