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

There are many technologies that I have used in order to not only create my final product but also research and plan for it. Prior to this task of creating my own music magazine I had never used Survey Monkey, it was an easy and effective way to gather information. It was very simple to create your own survey and customize all of your own questions and then eventually email the link and gather your results, which means that it was much quicker to gain responses than say handing out copies of a survey for people to fill in. Once people had replied to my survey I then was able to go back and see percentages and bar charts concerning the results for each question. The information from my survey led me to making some important decisions about both the styling and context of my magazine and receive honest opinions from my target audience as to what their preferences were which meant that I was much easier able to cater for their needs. The majority favored more colloquial language embedded in both the articles and subheadings, a sophisticated but eye-catching cover, short bold subheadings, only one main image to feature on the cover. Another of the technologies I had never used before was blogger, again this was easy to set up and post regularly on whenever I needed to update my progress. It enabled me to keep a constant record of my progress to refer back to when creating and researching for my music magazine. Within some of my blog posts I again introduced some new technologies such as Slideshare, which allowed me to upload information in a different format to just writing in paragraphs, making my posts more dynamic and interesting. Comment by Liam Woodward: Quite vague here what specific things did you learn from the survey that you implemented into your production?Comment by Liam Woodward: B Once I began to create my media product and again encounter technologies I was not familiar with, I did find myself often seeking assistance. InDesign was a crucial element involved in the construction of my magazine. At first I found it difficult to access and use some of its features, for example when I was creating my gradient background, and also when grouping text boxes and columns. Learning these skills made it far easier to create my product and also make it look exactly how I wanted it. The main program that I really struggled with was Photoshop. I had never used it before so from the offset had to seek guidance as to how to use it. It was an important element of my magazine as there were several images that I needed to erase the background from which I initially found very challenging but eventually learnt how to use all of the tools to get the most refined finish. Comment by Liam Woodward: Again, I would use some screenshots here, and then label/annotate them to make clear some specific things you need to successfully use technology. Quick selection tool- used to cut out background of imagesAdd gradient to background or text box-make appearance more dynamic and not too overpowering or distracting when behind text.Select tool-used to select different elements to editCreate lines- helps to organize page, break up text, etc.Text box and editing text-used to make cover lines, columns for articles and page numbers