EVALUATION QUESTION SIXWhat have you learnt about technologies form the process of constructing this product?

HardwareOne of the main pieces of hardware that has been vital to creating my product has been the computer. I have needed it in order to run photoshop which is the basis of my magazine. Without this vital piece of hardware I wouldn’t have been able to create a professional looking magazine or make it look developed and unique.

I used more advanced technology when I was at home editing the front cover, contents page and double page spread to make it easier and more efficient for me to make them. I am lucky to have a graphics tablet at home which allowed me to put certain areas of the magazine in specific places so everything is in perfect positions.

Paper has also been important when it came to planning out how I wanted the front cover, contents page and double page spread to look. I have wrote down lots of different designs that I was going to follow with the names of fonts, the sizes and the various colours that I was going to use. I did this because I thought that it would be easier when it came to making the entire magazine blend and fit in to one, rather than it looking mis-matched and as though lots of random pages had been pieced together.

My phone and camera has also been good in getting photos of all of my planning research that I did on paper so that I could put it on my blog. Without being able to take this photos and using a scanner which is also another vital piece of hardware, I wouldn’t of been able to show the research that I had made on paper. Without this, it wouldn’t have been clear where I have got all of my ideas from.

SoftwareThis was a very important aspect of creating my magazine. There were lots of different highly necessary pieces of software that I needed to make use of, in order to ensure that my magazine was the best that it could be.

Photoshop was the main piece of software that I used. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to construct the front cover, contents page or double page spread as well as I would’ve liked. The features being technical and advanced, it allowed me to make a unique style magazine that would appeal to a wide audience. Despite it being a generally hard piece of software to work with, it has benefitted me greatly because there are no limits to what you can create with it.

The internet has also been a large piece of software. It has been a way for me to communicate with the rest of the class and my friends to show them how I’m getting on with all of my work so that we can all compare. Within the internet, I have been using wordpress to create a blog with a variety of posts on that show anyone who wants to look at it, the work that I have created. This is an efficient way to get my work to others and also so that it can be marked. This way of distributing media is become much more popular which is why it is a good idea to make use of it. Creating an online portfolio to showcase all of my work can prove very beneficial because of the amount of people that will be able to gain access to the work.

Other, much more simple pieces of software have been things like powerpoint and word. These basic pieces of software are necessary in creating presentations and documents that are needed to showcase particular pieces of work and also in creating evaluations such as this. Word has been important in creating questionnaires and completely notes that I have taken from focus groups. I also have used excel in creating charts to show the data that I collected from conducting my questionnaire when finding out what my target audience likes.

Other presentation piece of software that I made good use of is ‘prezi’ on the internet. It has been good to make my presentations more advanced. It is a good way to present a lot of information because of the animations that are involved. It doesn’t get boring which is why I have used it a lot to create presentations on textual analyses, magazine conventions and potential publishing companies. It has been an efficient way of demonstrating particular pieces of information which is why it has also been a vital piece of software.

Another vital piece of software is the use of fontspace, dafont and 1001 fonts, which you can find on the interent. Without these websites I wouldn’t have been able to create the designs that I wanted. The fonts that are already on the computer are limited and I feel like it is not possible to create a professional looking magazine without the use of some more defined fonts.

All of the hardware and software that I have got to grips with has been a learning curve in creating my media product. I have made some faults but I have learnt from them all using various methods to overcome each individual thing that I have had difficulty with. I think that all of the software and hardware that I have used has been key to creating the final designs that I am extremely happy with.

Individual Equipment (hardware & software)

Hardware Software

• Apple iMac • Photoshop

• Canon EOS 550D • Wordpress

• Apple iPhone • Prezi

• Wacom Graphics Tablet • Powerpoint/Keynote

• Scanner • Slideshare

• Paper • General Internet

Photoshop – My Main DeviceFor me the biggest piece of technology that I used was photoshop. It became the formation of my final designs and without I wouldn’t have been able to create the magazine that I was envisaging. Because of this, it because my most used piece of technology.

Granted, photoshop is a complex piece of technology and not everyone gets on with it, however, I think that it is one of the best technologies (softwares) that you can get in regards to editing photos. It lets you have complete freedom over what you create and allows you to present your ideas how ever you wish which is great when it comes to creating a piece of media text.

By using this software I have been able to express my ideas and opinions whilst appealing to a target audience with a specific type of magazine which fits into a niche in the market for magazines. Photoshop allowed me to create a completely different type of magazine through the techniques and tools that it allows me to use. Because of this, I was able to develop a good understanding of the software and using it to my advantage in creating the pages for my magazine. I have also developed my editing skills in photoshop which will allow me to create detailed and advanced pieces of media text in the future.

How I Used Photoshop• Photoshop helped me overcome certain obstacles that I encountered when

creating my magazine. For instance I found it especially hard to create the insert for the front cover of my magazine efficiently and so that it looked the way I wanted it to. It took me a while to get the hang of how to do it even after looking at a variety of different tutorials on the internet for help. None of them seemed to work the way that I wanted them to, so in the end I just messed around with the tools on photoshop and managed to create one myself using my own techniques. Without the use of photoshop, I wouldn’t of been able to create this particular insert and I would have had to change the way I was going to make the layout of the magazine.

This is the particular insert that I had trouble with. I wanted to make it look like a sticker as you can see that I eventually made it the way that I wanted to, with it looking effective. The difficulty that I encountered was making it look like it was peeling off of the page which meant that I had to think more about how I was going to create this feature without it looking fake and unrealistic. This is what I had difficulty with when it came to actually editing the insert. Despite the obstacle that I was faced with, I overcome it using the tools that were available of photoshop and I managed to get it to look really realistic and like an actual sticker.