Question 6

Question 6: what did you learn about using particular programs in the process of creating your product?

When creating my products I used multiple products and websites in order to create my final product. The product which I used the most was Photoshop 2014 and as a result I got a wealth of experience from my time using it as the main platform to creating my product. When I began using Photoshop I had only had a fleeting encounter with the product in order to get the basics down to rights before I started using it to create an essential piece of coursework.

Where I got the most experience was in the tools of Photoshop such as the magic eraser and the eyedropper tool as they were essential in removing the backgrounds of my images and helped me refine my product to a near professional level. The group of tools outside of the main toolbar which I found useful was the group of tools which modified the layers separately with tools such as drop shadow, colour overlay and stroke which had a profound effect on how my product looked and felt, stroke especially as without it my text would not stand out and I may have been shoehorned into using colours which contrast in order to make my text easily visible from the distance it needs to be seen in order to attract my target audience.

In terms of the websites I used in order to put the posts on my blog without having to go through the process of posting them directly and risking some parts of the blog posts being moved or made invisible/obscured etc. Issuu is the main website I used to create my blog posts as the interface was simple and the conversion of the post to an embeddable post was very quick and had little to no drawbacks, before this project I had no experience with using Issuu and at the end of the project I feel as if I had learnt the ins and outs with the website making it much easier to create a blog post which looked professional without paying a website to help me do it.

Another website which proved its usefulness to me throughout the project was Surveymonkey as without it I would have been unable to create a questionnaire and reach out to my audience as quickly and thus take more time out of my development schedule in order to create and distribute something which was essential when it came to the creation of my product and also essential aspects such as the main focus of the magazine and whether the magazine should be online only or in print.