Activity 6

Evaluation 6:

Throughout my music magazine task I used various programms to help me complete this. Some of the programs I used thought included 'Adobe Photoshop® CS5 , Microsoft office and ISSUU for my evaluation. I also used Flickr for annotations and Blogger to upload all my research and findings. I used facebook to help me with my audience research and for more findings on my target audience.

Photoshop:

I found this quite a challenging task because I had never previously used photoshop so it took me a while toi get to grips with how it worked.

For some of my images I wanted to make them look a bit different so I used the ‘brightness and contrast’ button as shown on the left to help me achieve this. On my fornt cover I had brightened the image and made the colours richer whereas on my contents page I wanted to go for a slightly different effect. I decided as I went for a warm image on my front cover I would go for a cold image on my contents page. I decided for this I would reduce the .

For some of my images I wanted to make them look a bit different so I used the ‘brightness and contrast’ button as shown on the left to help me achieve this. On my front cover I had brightened the image and made the colors richer whereas on my contents page I wanted to go for a slightly different effect. I decided as I went for a warm image on my front cover I would go for a cold image on my contents page. I decided for this I would reduce the brightness I did this for my contents page and double page spread. For my main double page spread image I thought I would go for a slightly different approach and reduce the saturation instead of having all my images the same, using the same technique.

I also used 'blur' a lot for my images, as I didn’t want them that clear if they were going to be background images. I wanted the audience to know that the images were linked in with my music magazine but I didn’t want the to take focal point which is one of the reasons I blurred them. I did this for my double page spread background images.

I used a drop shadow on my title; I kept rearranging the distance because it was hard for me to find a good balance between the two. I decided that I was going to have one but a really faint one. If I were to complete this task again I would have used a drop shadow on my sticker, as I did originally have one but decided against it because I had quite a variation of colors on it already and didn’t want to over do this.

For some of my text featuring on my main cover I had to use an outer glow to give my text some definition. I used this technique quite a lot throughout my 3 main products as I believed in made the text stand out and gave it some definition.

For my bands strip, which is placed at the top of my magazine the background, was purple and I wanted to use white as this would contrast with the purple and make it stand out. I also wanted to link this banner in with my eroded theme which I had previously done for my masthead I thought I would achieve this by getting the eraser and picked the 'splatter 24 pixel' eraser and just press it over certain parts of the banner this later became a problem when I realised that my white text didn’t show up where I had put gaps in the purple banner. I later decided that I would copy my text and delete the middle part of the text so I was just left with the outline I then placed this over my text to give the text that didn’t show up an outline so that it would then show up.

Blogger:

For this project I also used logger which was the main website I used to upload all of my research and findings. I had never previously used this website so it took e a while to work out how it worked to enable progress throughout my blog. After about 2 weeks of learning how to use this website I was able to become more advanced and was able to improve my blog each week through

various techniques. Some of these techniques included using programs such as ‘issu’ to upload word documents using URL codes and upload analyzing results. Some of the things I uploaded to Blogger included paper drafts, magazine analysis and audience research. I also put additional information on here that linked in with my music magazine.

I also learnt how to do blog posts and make labels in order to sort out my data. As you can tell by the left hand image I have 3 of my labels on show so you can see an example of what I am discussing. I found that by doing this I was able to organize my data into the right sections and this would make it easier to find in the future. I also thought it made it easier if I wanted to change a section or simply edit it. This was another thing that I learnt on blogger.

Flickr:

Another one of the programmes I used was Flickr this was where I annotated all of my images. For the first task I had to complete on here I had to annotate 3 music front covers in order to help m when I came to create my own so I knew what to look for and what to include. The second task I had to complete was I had to annotate 3 contents pages of my choice and talk about them to help me in my final task. For the third task I had to upload and annotate 3 double page spreads I liked. I Found these task for helpful as it helped me know what to include it also made me look at things in more detail and notice the little things which you wouldn’t necessarily notice at a quick glance It helped me in what I needed to do for my final task and also made me compare lots of music magazines together and helped me with designing mine. I had never previously used Flickr, this put me at a slight disadvantage but it was an easy and simple programme to be able to use and I managed to get to grips with it fairly easy. When I had completed my three main tasks I had to upload them onto Flickr and analyse them, this is how I was able complete the evaluation question 5. I found this quite easy because I had designed it so I knew why and how I did this so was easy to annotate.

ISSUU

For my Evaluations and graphs I completed these on word so in order to upload them to Blogger I had to use Issuu which is a programme which converts word documents into a booklet for you to upload straight onto your blog.

To the left you can see some of the documents I have converted and some of Issuu’s tools.

Facebook For my target audience I decided to go for males and females aged between 15‐17 years of age. I decided one of the ways I would address my target audience would be through Facebook. I needed 20 people to complete my questionnaire so I thought that if I posted it on Facebook the majority of my friends would be able to participate and this way I would be addressing my target audience. I made sure that one of the questions was 'Are you female or male' so that I wouldn't have 20 of all the same gender. I found by using Facebook to help me complete this task I was able to get better information than if I would have just asked random people. I found that by choosing a target audience that I could relate to would help me in gathering information. I know quite a lot of 15‐17 year olds due to school so i was able to complete this task sufficiently.

Equipment used

I used a Mac computer for the majority for my work. This allowed me to research n the internet and type up word documents. It also saved lots of time as I didn’t have to hand write anything.

I used a camera lead to transfer my images from my camera to the computer. I preferred to use a lead rather than a card reader because I thought it was a lot quicker and I had a lead so I thought I would use it.

To take my images throughout my work I used an ‘Olympus FE‐230’ Camera to help me throughout my work. I took pictures of my models, paper drafts and findings with this camera. It allowed me to take various shots, these including, long shots, close ups and many others. It also gave me very clear images which were lovely to edit and made my magazine look a lot more professional.