Q6. Technologies

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

Photoshop:

For my main task of designing a music magazine, I used Photoshop. Below there is a picture of my front cover whilst I am working on the final touches. This shows all the features available for me to use whilst making the cover. The preliminary task of making a college magazine, I had never used Adobe Photoshop before, and this was a chance to learn how to use both basic and advanced tools. This therefore helped when I came to design my main task as I could then apply my knowledge from the previous task, and show how much I had progressed. There were many advantages to using Photoshop as my main programme as it is available at college and also seen as top editing software. This programme also allows you to play about with the tools and try out different things. However, Photoshop did take a while to get used to and the equipment is expensive so you are not likely to own it at home.

Blogger:

I have used Blogger to present all my media coursework during the course. This is an easy way to keep all work in a tidy place and simple to get onto. Although I have read blogs before, I had no experience of managing my own blog before this. I managed to gain skills on how to link different websites to my blog posts and ways to label different posts under headings. This was great to use because it is free, so suits all types of people. It also allows you to post videos, pictures etc to your blog meaning you can present all your information in the way you would like to. On the other hand, I did have problems with the website and it locking my blog, which caused confusion.


Survey Monkey:
I used survey monkey to get information from my target audience about what they would expect from magazines they would buy. This was very helpful and a good website to be aware of as I used it to help me decide my final things to add to the magazines I have made, and it makes it clear what certain people look for and what your selling points should be.

Flickr:
I was familiar with Flickr, but never used it personally, so I have also learnt how useful Flickr is to annotate certain things, for example I used this website to annotate all my research on front covers, double page spreads and contents pages. This proved to be easy to use and helps to keep all work tidy and in one place, therefore avoiding having to find it all in your documents.