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

During the task of making my magazine as well as carrying out the research i have used a variety of different media technology to help me complete this. The new technology i have encounted and used has helped me greatly when completing the tasks as it has made it a lot easier and allowed me to create my magazine cover more professionally which would not be possible if technology did not exist.

The first piece of technology i used was the internet and Google images to find pictures of magazine front covers and contents pages which i used in my research. The Images i collected were saved to my desktop and then inserted into Photoshop which was a new piece of technology i learned to use in this task. Photoshop was a lot harder to use than other programs such as word when i first started to use it, but after completing the first research task i found it a lot easier. When i first started to use Photoshop the part where each thing is on a separate layer was very confusing and it took me a while to remember the layers, but once i started Initial research 2 then the layers format became a natural occurrence and i found it was a lot more easier to move objects such as pictures and text round the page than it was on word. The difficulties i had with using Photoshop was the size of the canvas when you opened a new document. The measurements were very confusing and therefore i  did not know what i needed to insert in order to get the right size.

The second piece of technology i used was a digital camera which i have used before. The fact i have used it before made it easier to take the picture of what i needed which was the rough design of my magazine and also the pictures for the real design. The only difficultly i encountered was the angle i should hold the camera when taking the pictures of the model i used and what closeness was a close up shot which would be most appropriate.

In contrast i used these images to build up my front cover of my magazine in In-design which was a totally new programme i had never heard of before. This programme was very useful with what  i intended to do and was very easy to use. There have been many things which i have learned to do whilst using Indesign which  i did not know how to do before.  firstly i learned how to insert an image into the document by creating a rectangle and then importing the image into this. Then i was able to insert text onto a new layer which was alot easier to move around the screen and place where i wanted. The image shows that i was able to place the text 'shh' at an angle and overlapping other text which would not be possible on other technology programmes and most likely not at the same easiness as Indesign. Furthermore i was able to create reversed out shapes which was inserting a shape and then changing the colour which created a great effect on my magazine front cover. i was able to use these shapes to create little images which i used for bullet points which i think fitted in with the theme of my magazine.

The use of blogger has been useful in many ways. It has helped me upload and keep all the research in order in which i competed them and i was able to create it in Photoshop and then insert it into the blog post so i did not have to write it out again. It has been slightly misleading in the fact on the second week of using it, blogger had deleted all my posts and therefore i had to start again which was not nice. 

Overall the technology i have used for this project has helped in many ways and i do not think i could have completed the unit without it. it has allowed me to learn new skills and experiment with them to achieve the best results. It has been slightly confusing, such as in Photoshop and working out the measurements needed when creating a new document, but overall it has helped greatly and these skills will be used in the future.