Overall I used 14 different forms of technology to construct this product and for the process before it, whether it be constructing my front cover on Photoshop or Indesign or uploading images in a slideshow on Slidely, or collecting data and putting it in graphs on survey monkey. All technologies explained here are explained with screen shots and more detail in my skills development.
The first technology I learnt to use was Blogger, On Blogger I learnt how to upload, videos and images, and embed things, I also learnt how to make a post, give it a title and then attach it to the appropriate label.
At the beginning of the year, before I could start on my magazine I had to find out and research about other magazine to find out typical elements, what readers expect of a magazine e.g. on the front cover you expect a price and a date. To present this research with images on my Blog i chose to do it in a Powerpoint to make it clear to read, however you can not directly upload a Powerpoint to Blogger, this is where I learned to use Slideshare, I made an account uploaded the Powerpoint to slide share, gave it a title and a small description then copied the embed code and pasted it in the html part of my post, and the Powerpoint played like a neat slideshow on my Blog, making my analysis clear, easy to read and find.
Further on, I began to do research and planning for my own magazine. I used a technology called Surverymonkey, this enabled me to put together a set of questions to find out information about my target audience, for the preliminary task I handed out questionnaires however this way I could share it on Facebook which is a good platform to get results from my target audience as my target audience are teens to young adults so the majority of them will be on social networks such as Facebook, I could also get quicker responses. I used a range of open and closed questions to collect this data and Surveymonkey aloud me to do both, it was easy to give options for closed questions but also room for detail on open questions. After collecting the research for my primary data i am then able to go back on the website and convert the results into graphs, making it easier to read and easier to find out exactly what had the highest percentages so i know what to include in my magazine and how my target audience is. to conclude, Surveymonkey's tools were simple and easy to use and led to a key part of my primary research as I was able to find out what my target audience want and knew what to include in my magazine and who I am aiming it at.
For my evaluation I used Slidely for one of the questions, I used this as it is a creative way to show images easily while adding a song in the background. I used it also to show images of my finished product while playing in the corner of the screen my audience feedback that helped me develop that final product. I uploaded images to a slideshow, and then clicked next and selected the audience feedback video of Youtube, combined the two and embedded it on my Blog, to conclude this enabled me to combine my audience feedback video with my final product nicely to help demonstrate my answer for the evaluation question.
In research and planning I also had to show evidence of planning things such as the photo-shoot or planning questions to ask for the interview and articles for my magazine. For this I typed up my planning all on word, so i could underline and change font size with ease, I then had to find away to upload this to my Blog, I chose the technology Scribd as it allowed me to upload the documents to the website then converted it so i had an embedded code which I uploaded to a Blog post and it was able to viewed as a word document in word while being on my website. To conclude this technology enabled me to use word, a technology I am familiar with then convert it so I was bale to upload it to my Blog in the same format as word.
Indesign was far more complex then others I have mentioned, I learnt how to use this technology through Youtube tutorials and a class tutorial on the software. This technology helped me produce the whole construction of my contents page and double page spread. On this software I learnt how to do many things to help me create key elements of a music magazine in my magazine e.g. pull quotes to grab the readers attention and make them want to read the article, drop caps to make my double page spread look professional as it is a typical element of a magazine, upload an image so I had plenty of images to draw in the readers and make my article and contents look interesting not just blocks and block of text, arrange the order of images and text- bring to front or send to back allowing me to put text over an image for example in the case of inserting a stand first, use lines to assure text boxes are level and insert columns to give a professional layout, type on the path- where you type around certain parts of an image to make my magazine look creative again drawing in the reader- this was the most challenging element i found, get the text to go around an image- this allowed me to fit the images in between the text nicely so it flows and still looks professional, how to changes colours, fonts and sizes so I could make it suitable for my magazine and gain attract the audiences attention etc. Overall the software was very useful in helping me develop skills and had tools needed to achieve the double page spread and contents I wanted, achieving all the typical elements and conventions I wanted to include.
The next technology I used was also for my evaluation I downloaded this of the Internet to my desktop, once downloaded I am able to click play and when I hear the beep it will record whatever I am doing on my desktop. I used this as a good way to answer one of my evaluation questions as I was able to get up examples on the screen while helping to explain my answer. It also records any audio so I could explain the answer by audio while scrolling the mouse over the examples I was talking about. To conclude this was a good was to evaluate as I was able to evaluate in a creative way, without writing an essay I could just speak and show examples to further explain and back up my evaluation while pointing to exactly what I meant and switching from one document to another.
Also for an evaluation question I used the technology Lino, this was a technology I could use online by just signing up, it aloud me to present my answer in a creative yet simple way- using sticky notes and images, again I used this to answer the evaluation question while avoiding the boring method of an essay. To conclude it was good as I was able to incorporate images and keep the text to key points, avoiding baffling, making it clear and to the point.
I used Kizoa as it was a good choice in technology to present my photography on. Because I had taken so many photos for my photography by the way I was exploring camera angles, camera shots, different body language, different poses etc. I wanted a quick way to display all these photos I took, so i used Kizoa as it shows all these images and moves from one image to the next automatically so you can see the images while reading about why I chose to take each image in that particular way. All I done was upload the images in to separate slideshows- one slideshow for the ones I took for my front cover, another for ones I took for my contents page and another for ones I took for the double page spread and why I took these images differently for the different pages in my magazine they would be displayed on. To conclude this was a good way to present a large amount of images that one would not want to click through them all.
Photoshop was a key technology to help make my front cover as it provided me with many tools that not other software has to achieve the front cover I want. To begin with I struggled a lot to begin with but soon found many online tutorials on how to do exactly what I wanted to do. This helped to develop and advance my skills shown in my skills development including, editing an image, make it black and white, brighten the image, changed the fonts, changed the colours, use magnetic lasso tool to cute out the background, change the eyes to blue or lips to red on a black and white image to draw in the reader by focusing on their pose and drawing them in with eye contact, learnt to bring part of an image forward e.g. their heads over part of the masthead but keep the rest of the image behind the text, how to get my text to glow to make it stand out etc. The main part I struggled with on Photoshop was the many layers, you constantly had to switch back and find the right layer to edit or adjust the bit you wanted. Overall although challenging Photoshop enabled me the tools to make my music magazine meet typical conventions and make a successful and professional looking front cover.
Another piece of technology i used was the snipping tool, this allowed me to do print screens but cut the exact bit I wanted not the whole screen. This meant I didn't have to crop the image or highlight the skill I wanted to focus on.. This technology helped me a lot for my skills development. Overall this was very useful as it was easy to take screen shots of the exact part I wanted to focus on not of the whole screen.
Prezi was on an online technology, all I had to do was sign up and then add images or text or both to either a original Prezi or I could use a template. This was a nice and creative way to present my work instead of always doing slideshows, it was easy to use and let me use images and text and adjust the size of them and add any extra slides if needed. To conclude Prezi helped me as it was very easy to use but made my work look professional giving a birds eye view of all my text and images and then zooming in to each individual part so you can clearly see the text and image, it was a good way to present work such as my mood board.
I used Issuu as it help to demonstrate what my magazine would really look like if it was published I was able to do this by converting all my Photoshop and Indesign to jpeg then inserting each image on a individual page on a word document. For my drafts I left a page between the front cover and the contents page as i wanted the contents page to be page 3 and often the 2nd page would be used for an advert. For my final magazine I made an advert and inserted it on the 2nd page. I then uploaded these to the website issue, published them and used the embedded code to upload it to my Blog. Overall it is a good technology for a magazine
as turns the pages into something which is like an online magazine so you can see exactly what it will look like.For further explanation, including screen grabs I have explained and done screen shots for all these skills in my skills development folder.
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