Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

During the creation of my product I used a range of different technologies in order to produce a professional magazine. The first technology I used was InDesign, which I was new to, to create a basic template of what my magazine would look like. After gathering ideas from several other music magazines I decided to go with three columns of writing on my first double page spread. InDesign made this decision an easy one for me to carry out, as they feature a tool which enables you to carry text on across columns. As my article was already written, this made it a quick and efficient start, as I simply copied and pasted the text in. I drew out boxes on my contents page, ready for text and images to be inserted later, and did the same on my front cover. I used the master page to create professional details such as the Twitter account featured at the top of each page and my magazines website at the bottom of each page. The master page allows you to add any text or images you would like to feature in the same place on every page, which makes the magazine overall look more professional as everything is in its place. I used the master page to also create banners on the top and bottom of each page along with page numbers. Although when I started, I was not familiar with all of the tools however now I feel like I have learnt about the programme and feel much more confident with using it.

 I carried out two photo-shoots using my Cannon SLR because this is my own camera I know exactly how to use it and felt very confident that my images where going to turn out how I wanted. The fact this my camera is digital is another helpful factor as I was able to take hundreds of photos and also check over them, deleting those I did not feel where appropriate for my magazine genre. I used this camera when taking photos of my model up in Camden and Shoreditch; most of my images where taken in good lighting as I when out at around midday, I decided that I didn’t need to take any photos in the end on an white back drop. Because my magazine is aimed at people who enjoy indie/rock music I wanted the backgrounds all to be bright, bold and patterned. My photographs still looked extremely professional even though I didn’t use any trigger lighting, where bright lights flashed in sync to when I took a photograph.

I was then able to transfer the photos from the camera to my computer by inserting the memory card into a USB, which allowed me to save them onto my computer very quickly.
After taking a range of photos I then edited them, so they were appropriate for use in my magazine. To remove the background from the photos, I used the colour range tool in Photoshop, which I feel I am rather experienced with as I’ve used this tool several times before in previous coursework. After doing so, I adjusted lighting levels on the photos so that they were either brighter or darker, depending on my preference which varied from photo to photo. On my front cover I kept the whole image behind the title apart from my models head, this was tricky to do as I had never edited a photograph like this before. All I had to do was copy the image, then rub out all of it apart from the head and then paste it back on top.

 I have also used other forms of technologies to construct my product, mainly the internet, by making use of many sites available to me. Blogger, however, has been one of the largest contributors to the production of my magazine as it allowed me to document every stage of the production process and also let me constantly update my ideas, in my draft posts, before publishing them. Survey Monkey allowed me to create surveys to hand out to my target audience in order to gain information on what they would enjoy reading in my magazine, whilst Google supplied me with images and information about previous music magazines and their distributors. Google has also allowed me to collect images that inspired my photo shoot, or magazine in general, and post these to my blog in the form of a mood board.