Question 6

Qu6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Qu7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt

in the progression from it to the full product?

Definitions of programmes and technologies I used• Adobe InDesign: a software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures,

magazines, newspapers and books. InDesign can also publish content suitable for tablet devices in conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media.

• Abobe Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems.

• Microsoft Powerpoint: a non-free commercial software program developed by Microsoft. PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual pages or "slides.“

• Microsoft word: a non-free word processor designed by Microsoft.

• Dafont: an online archive of freely downloadable fonts. Fonts are categorized by theme, and can also be sorted by name, date, and popularity. The site also allows users to enter custom text when previewing fonts.

• Find Your Tribe: an online questionnaire that finds your “tribe” (target audience,) from the answers you give.

• The Internet: The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks to serve billions of users worldwide.

• Google Search: a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search, is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web,[3] receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services.

• Canon d400 SLR digital camera: is an entry level digital single-lens reflex camera introduced by Canon 24 August 2006.

• Glogster: http://glogster.com is a site for online poster construction

• Bubbl: http://www.bubbl.us/ is an online brainstorm/ mindmap creator

• Pixton: http://www.pixton.com/ is an online comic strip creator

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• Before I began my preliminary task, I had no previous experience with using either InDesign or Photoshop. The – only programmes I had any skills were Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and other similar ones.

• The only knowledge I had of any magazines (including their codes and conventions,) was knowledge I had gained through reading magazines in my personal time. The only music magazines I read before I began the preliminary task were Kerrang! And Rock Sound, both of which were reasonably long ago.

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• When undertaking my preliminary task, my skills at using InDesign and Photoshop were non existent. However, although my preliminary task wasn’t to a very high standard, it improved my basic skills at both of the programmes brilliantly and as when making the contents page I struggled at editing the images to import and thus ran out of time to include one, I knew I had to practise my Photoshop skills before creating my final product.

• When carrying out my research, the main programme I used was Internet Explorer. Via the Internet, I searched and gathered information on magazine publishers, and their magazines. Throughout the research phase, my search engine skills improved vastly, as there was so much research – I needed to become efficient to save time.

• The other two main websites I used in this section, I hadn’t come across before: Blogger, and Find Your Tribe. Find Your Tribe was an online questionnaire that found your target audience – this was reasonably easy to control. Blogger is an online blog where I will be hosting my magazine and the work surrounding it. During the research phase my blog was very simple and I had little on there.

• In the planning for my magazine, I used the website Dafont to test different font styles on my masthead. The websites lets you chose and download any fonts from different categories. From using this I gained greater knowledge on different typographies and their input to a magazine. The site itself was simple to use.

• When on the photo shoot for my magazine, I was using a Canon 400d digital SLR camera I had borrowed from a friend. I had next to no previous photography experience. I used the same camera in my preliminary task and the photos weren’t as good due to lack of experience.

• When taking the photos in my planning, I was in a photography studio, with a backdrop and props. My skills with a camera improved massively, and I was altering the focus, brightness and contrast, zoom, shutter speed and flash to develop the quality of the photos in comparison to the preliminary task – where I just left the default settings on and took the photos.

• I also had another chance at using Adobe Photoshop (the photo editing software,) too as I then went on to edit my photos in preparation for the construction. After practising and advancing my skills with this programme during and after the preliminary task, I was able to change the contrast, pixels, size, and layer my images.

• During my production, the programme I used was InDesign (alongside a little Photoshop for editing.)

Text boxes

Different fonts, colours & text sizes

Weight on outline of text

Image fitted to A4 (learnt from preliminary task.)

Layered – photo at back, text at front. (learnt on preliminary task.)

Aligned text boxes

• The production of my main task was much more successful than that of my preliminary one.

• I think this was mainly down to the fact I had experience from the preliminary task. My photography skills improved greatly, as well as my skills at all of the above features.

• Throughout my evaluation I tried to use a range of different methods to present my work to make it creative and visually interesting; these included:– Powerpoint: To present my pictures, images, screen caps in a smart form.– Glogster: an online poster maker, I used this to import images and text to

visually represent my target audience from the research I had gathered.– Pixton: an online comic maker I used to represent and visually show the

opinions of my target audience and social groups – as well as briefly showing the stages my magazine went through.

– Bubbl: I used this magazine creator to simply and visually demonstrate the technologies I used throughout the process of producing my magazine.

All of these websites were reasonably simple to use , however I learnt more on how to creatively present information. From each my skills in using the internet, importing and editing images and graphics, and downloading images to PowerPoint have improved. Since the preliminary task I have gained much confidence in using technology to my advantage – within the preliminary task I was only using Microsoft programmes and struggled with any editing software, and since then I have gained more and more experience by using all of these programmes.