Semiotics

Semiotics, or semimology  is the study of signs, symbols, and signification. It is the study of how meaning is created, not what it is. Below are some key semiotic terms that i need to know when producing my work.

Signifier: any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial expression, an image.

Signified: the concept that a signifier refers to.


Sign: the smallest unit of meaning. Anything that can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).

Symbolic (arbitrary) signs: signs where the relation between signifier and signified is purely conventional and culturally specific, e.g., most words.

Iconic signs: signs where the signifier resembles the signified, e.g., a picture.

Indexical Signs: signs where the signifier is caused by the signified, e.g., smoke signifies fire.

Denotation: the most basic or literal meaning of a sign, e.g., the word "rose" signifies a particular kind of flower.

Connotation: the secondary, cultural meanings of signs; or "signifying signs," signs that are used as signifiers for a secondary meaning, e.g., the word "rose" signifies passion.

Newsletter Mock Up

Here are my mock ups for my front cover and contents of my new Deyes High School newsletter.

Image Research Around School

I have taken images from around the school but I still need to upload them onto my users so this is unfinished.

Newsletter

The Deyes High School newsletter is colour coded and matches the school colour theme, these are blue, red, black, white and yellow. This gives a much more professional look to the newletter and by the amount of different colours used in this, it will appeal alot more to a younger audience.

Throughout the newsletter the same font is used to make it look more professional, whereas if it used alot of different fonts of every page, it will not look as good and possibly look childish. The type of font used in this newsletter shows high levels of formality as it is using bold/ bigger text for the title and then smaller text to show what the person is reading about. People could argue and say it may look better if they used other fonts throughout the newsletter to make it look more enticing to read. But, I believe since it is a school, they should have the same font throughout as it makes it look alot more professional.

In this newsletter images are also used which will make it look better. The main image on the front cover is an image of the head teacher which shows she is the most powerful person in the whole school. Other images are used in the newsletter throughout it such as images of students, drama etc. Their are also image advertisements in the news letter trying to encourage students/parents to go and watch a drama performance in the school. The logo is also used in the newsletter to clearly show what school it is.
The Deyes High School logo and name are used at the top of the newsletter to show that it is offical and proffesional. It shows what school it is because without it the reader would know what school it was.

The text in the newsletter is seperated in paragraphs, sone large and some small. This is so the reader doesn't get bored of reading pages of texts and makes them wants to carry on reading the rest.

Overall, i think the newsletter is very good, but it could do with some slight changes to make it abit more enticing to the reader, this is what I will do which will be show on the next few blog posts.

Questionnaire

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGdlM1ljd0hhTzJXWHBLS29oY2ZwRGc6MQ#gid=0

Music Magazine Genre's

In the music industry, there are hundreds of different genre's. There all tons of different music magazines that are available. The list below shows all of the different types of music magazine genres;

Alt-Country

Alternative

Bluegrass

Blues

Christian

Classical

Country

Electronic
Folk
Funk
Gospel
Gothic
Industrial
Jazz

Latin

Metal

New wave and synthpop
Opera

Punk and Hardcore

R&B and Soul

Rap and Hip-Hop

Reggae

Rock and Pop

Ska

Surf Rock

Introduction

For the next few months during my media course i will be studying and hopefully producing certain pages on a music themed magazine. By the end of the course i will hopefully have produced a front cover, contents page and double page spread on a music magazine based upon a music genre of my choice. The Genre I have decided to use for my music mag is going to be Chart Music. This has all of the details on new upcoming music. I will also have to complete other various tasks as well which i will be posting regularly to keep you up to date with. I will using a software called Adobe Photoshop which i will be using to edit my photos with.