Evaluation Question 6

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


There was a variety of different technologies that I used to complete the construction of my magazine, and all can be seen in the wallwisher wall below.





Adobe Photoshop
The first, and probably most important thing I used to complete my magazine was Adobe Photoshop. As I had no prior knowledge of using Photoshop I was slightly worried that I would not be able to take full advantage of its full features when constructing my magazine. After a few weeks of using it I did, however, get the hang of it and found it a very beneficial tool to use. Not only did it allow me to construct and organise the layout of my work into layers, it also allowed me to manipulate my pictures in order to make them look of the highest standard. I could also add effects to my work which makes it look more professional, which is something I wouldn't have been able to do if I was using another program. It is an extremely advanced piece of technology that allowed me to do things that I would never have been able to do on programs such as Microsoft Paint for example. I couldn't have even had the option to edit my photographs in paint, which is wy Adobe Photoshop was such a vital tool to use for the construction of my music magazine.


Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign was used for the full construction of my double page spread. As I hadn't used InDesign for my preliminary task, I didn't feel as comfortable using it at first, as I didn't think I would be able to use it to my full advantage in order to produce the best work that I could. It turned out I was wrong as InDesign has many features that would not have been possible to recreate if I was to have used another program such as Photoshop or Microsoft Word. An example of a great feature that I was able to iinclude in my double page spread was text wrap. This gave my magazine a more professional look to it and helped me to structure the page more efficiently around pictures and pull quotes. One other useful feature in InDesign that I used for my work was the column feature. This adds in any nnumber of columns that you specify, all equally spaced and sized. This was very convenient as if I would have tried to do this in a program such as publisher, it would have taken a lot more time and effort.


Blogger
Blogger is the tool that I used to present the research, planning and final pieces of my work. It allowed me to keep all of my work organised in one place without having to have hundreds of sheets of paper in a large folder. There are many features of Blogger that allowed me to present my work in a professional way. One feature was that I was able to personalise my blog with my own colour scheme, animated banner, different fonts and font sizes, and pictures to compliment my work. I feel that this is a very good feature as the blog essentially becomes another piece of work that you can relate to the overall quality of my coursework. Another great feature of blogger is the ability to post your work in date order, but more importantly in grouped labels. This means that the blog is a lot easier to navigate through and every piece of work can be found with a couple of clicks rather than scrolling through the blogs for hours on end. Blogger is in effect an online replacement for a folder that can be organised a lot more precisely, and is something that I would have found it hard to complete my work without.