Question 6 – Media Analysis

Jordan Rich

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

• During the process of my magazine, I have had to learn about new types of software in order to produce my front cover, my contents page, and my double page spread. For each of the 3 pieces of media I had to create, the first thing I had to do was to take photographs with a digital camera. I rarely took pictures on cameras before this so the first few images came out blurry and out of focus. As the process went on I began to take clearer photographs and managed to adapt to this new technique to take better quality pictures.

PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop was the next piece of software which I had to learn how to use. This was the first ever time I used it; however, by the end of the course, my skills had drastically improved. The difference between my Photoshop skills from the preliminary task and the final task was amazing, and I feel I had massively improved. Since beginning with Photoshop, I only knew how to crop and trim parts of an image, but as my production course went on, I began to learn how to duplicate layers, as well as add text in different colours and fonts throughout my 3 media pieces. Whilst polishing off the design of the front cover, I made sure that the person featuring on the cover Declan Kinnear was of good quality, I made changes to the contrast and brightness which then made the colour of Declan look more natural as the bright flash had previously made him appear a lot paler than he was.

QuarkQuark was another programme in which I had never used before, and yet again, I believe I managed to get to grips with it quite comfortably. What made the concept of getting to grips with Quark more difficult was that it was recognised industry standard software. It was very important for me to get the basic understanding of this programme as it was essential in the production of each of the 3 media pieces.

The contents page and double page spread relied on Quark as it had the capability to add columns to structure both the contents and double page spread in a professional manner. Any images that were used had to be edited in Adobe Photoshop before being imported into Quark. After learning from self research, however, I managed to get to grips, and just like my progress with Photoshop, the difference between the preliminary task and the final product had a massive difference

Internet and Microsoft Office

• The internet played a key role in the production of my magazine. This was so that basic research could be done. The research consisted of looking at codes and conventions of magazines as well as getting ideas on how to structure the magazine. I also needed the internet to import in a barcode for the front cover, which finished off the design, to give it a sleek and professional look.

• The other 2 pieces of software used was Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint; however, as these are basic IT programmes, I had already learned how to use the word processors and I knew how to create titles and text boxes for each programme.