Semiotics

Semiotics is the study with signs and symbols in a photo. It is also the colours been used, this links in with magazines a lot, especially music magazines. Front covers of music magazines have a lot of semiotics within them because the front cover tells a lot of stories. The picture is trying to get you to read on in the magazine and needs to be eye catching. The use of semiotics help this, so in order for a music magazine to be successful it needs to have good semiotics within it. The most common semiotic signs are:

How they or something is communicating to the reader?

What does it symbolize?

What does it indicate?

How they make us feel?

Who are they designed for?

and...

Why are they designed?

For E.G. we know that if a man picked up a magazine and the basic colour was blue.  We would automatically think it would be a mans magazine.  We think this because we think blue is a boys colour while pink is a girls colour.  This is the idea of semiotics.

The male gaze is the concept of: How men look at women, how women look at themselves and how women look at other women. Laura Mulvey came up with the term 'Male Gaze' in 1975. She believed that film audiences view women in a sexual way. This links in with magazines because it shows how men look at women on the front covers. E.g. Miley Cyrus.