Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the production of my music magazine, I learnt a lot about different technologies. The choices I made using these different technologies, defined the outcome of my magazine and how well it was made, considering everything in mind. Not only did I use technology to actually produce and make my magazine, but I also used internet programmes to make my research easier to present.

 Throughout the whole magazine industry technology is used to design and produce it. This means that to make my magazine I had to also use different technologies. I got a simple grasp of these technologies during the skills audit, but I feel I developed my knowledge on them through the making of my magazine.

Apple Macs-I was using a Mac for the first time and in the beginning I struggled to get used to not using a normal PC. I soon begun to understand that certain things you carried out on a PC were done differently on a PC. For example if I wanted to take a screen shot I would have to use the grabber tool or if I wanted to copy I would have to press the apple+C key. Once I begun to adapt to these simple changes it made things run much quicker. When it comes to using software on the macs to create the magazine, macs make everything simpler as there are many keys you can simply press and things happen on the software, rather than having to do it yourself.

InDesign-This technology became the one I used the most to create my magazine. At first I was completely lost and had no idea what to do. I was thrown by all the different options and words. But every time I wanted to do something I asked and then begun to remember how to do it until eventually I had the basics mastered and could confidently make my magazine. I learnt on this technology how to place a picture, add text, add different shapes, add colour, create columns, warp text, and add different colours. I discovered that you could create anything you wanted and present it, making it easy to make an individual magazine page. All these things helped me to create my actual magazine including the front cover, double page spread and contents page and as it was saved as an image it was easy to upload to blogger.

Photoshop-All the different things you could do on Photoshop threw me a bit, even though I had previous practice with it during the skills audit task. I had the photos ready to edit and I only knew how to place them in the screen and resize them. I did a practise run with some soundboard photographs I had taken and learnt how to add different effects to them such as brushing and sepia. I also discovered how to change lighting in the pictures by adjusting the brightness and contrast. This really helped in making the images I used for my final magazine really achieve their full potential. I also discovered how to delete areas of the image I didn’t want. For example I had an image of a girl and I only wanted to use her silhouette, not the background she was in. I simply outlined the girl’s body and kept this whilst discarding the rest of the image. You can then save this as a separate image to carry on with or use on InDesign.

Blogger-From the previous task I felt quite confident with the different things you could do with blogger and what you could apply to your post. One thing I did learn though through my research part of making the magazine was how to add a HTML of for example, a slideshow from Slide share. This meant that the slideshow was now part of my blog post and could be viewed straight from the post.

There are also different internet technologies I learnt about during the process of constructing my magazine.

Prezi- This is an online zooming slideshow where you can write text, add pictures, add shapes and many more other features. It’s like creating a slide show but instead of different pages, you create it on one big page then make a path for it to follow as you watch. It also zooms in at each point for clearer reading. I found Prezi a really useful and effective way of presenting my research. It was really quick and easy to create and there are even tutorials to follow if you are struggling.

Slide share-With a slide share account I could upload previous power points I had made on Microsoft Power point. This enabled me to post these slide shows to my blog, a really good way of presenting research. It was really quick and easy to upload the slide shows and I feel I have learnt of a useful technology here.

Overall these technologies were the key players in the overall outcome of my magazine which I eventually created on InDesign. InDesign is where I got to experiment with lots of design ideas and is useful because it’s quick, making it effective and I can see all the best possible choices in regards to my magazine design, a very important element.

In conclusion I feel I have learnt a lot about different technologies and it has really helped make my magazine as good as it could possibly be. These technologies benefitted not only my final outcome, but also the research that helped my final outcome. I would feel confident if I had to do this all again and I would know how to use everything.