Roland Barthes 5 Codes Applied to Digipak and Poster

Roland Barthes has 5 Narrative Codes:

• Action Codes
• Enigma Codes
• Semantic Codes
• Symbolic Codes
• Cultural Codes

Looking at our poster, we have a simple design focusing on presenting the recognised star. We create an interest from the audience using a semantic code of money (dollar signs and notes), suggesting the additional meaning of materialism. This also acts as a cultural code as dollars are typically associated to gangster rappers and hip hop artists who include expensive cars, branded clothes and women in their music video, which we have included. This code makes the audience aware of the genre to advertise to the people who are already listening to hip hop. In our draft, although the money creates an interest for our character, I feel that more should be included in the design to suggest more about the music video and star, such as action codes and enigma codes. For our final draft, the colour scheme will include more of a contrast with bright red and blue with black. This links with the symbolic code, with the contrast connoting a mixture of her gangster side and her colourful fun side.