Codes and Conventions of School Magazines

Codes and Conventions of School Magazines

 

What are codes?

Codes are a sequence of signs that create meaning. Codes can be split into two futher catorgories: Technical and Symbolic.

Technical- All the ways that equipment is used to tell the story in a media text, for example the camera work in a film.

Symbolic- Show what is beneath the surface of what we see. For example, a character's actions tell you how the character is feeling.

 

 

What are conventions?

Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something/what you would expect to see in that specific type of media. There are general conventions in any medium, such as the use of interview quotes in a print article, but conventions are also genre specific.

 

 

How codes and conventions apply in media studies?Codes and conventions are used together in any study of genre – it is not enough to discuss a technical code used such as camera work, without saying how it is conventionally used in a genre.

 

 

Research on the codes and conventions of school magazine front covers:

Some of the codes and conventions that apply to magazines in general are;

•  The title is either in the middle, or at the top left corner of the magazine.
• Images are normally to the right of the text, or in the middle of the front cover and each have a sentence to briefly show what is inside the magazine.
•  Not too many colours are used, and the colours aren't too bright.

Some of the codes and conventions that are more specific to school magazines are;

• The title usually has something to do with the name of the school.
• The school logo appears on the front cover.
• The school colours are used throughout the magazine.
• The is an image of the students and/or the headteacher.
• The information is recent and relevent to the school/it's pupils.

Examples of school magazines that follow some of these codes and conventions:

 

 This school magazine has the school logo in the top corner, and has recent and relevent information on. It also has images of the students.
















This school magazines also has an image of the school logo on the front cover, and has two images of the pupils. The name of the school is used in the title of the magazine.
















This school magazine features the school logo and has two large images of students. The information is recent and relevent to it's audience.