WHAT

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EV

AL U

AT

I ON

- QU

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TI O

N 6

THE BEGINNING

When I first began my media coursework, I was expected to use blogger, Photoshop & InDesign; two of which I had no idea how to use.

Firstly, I signed up for blogger and taught myself the ropes with some help from my teacher. I think that blogger is a very easy site to navigate and use effectively once you know what you’re doing.

I had already had some previous experience from my secondary school and at home on Photoshop, however it is a very complex software, and I only needed to use it to crop an image, retouch it and take away part of the colour. I managed to successfully do this and below is the result:

In class we had a tutorial on how to work InDesign basically, but at first I found it hard to use and would have preferred to construct my magazine pages on Photoshop as I was familiar with it. However, with more practice I am now able to use it effectively, and have completed my magazine pages.

TECHNOLOGIES AND THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY The magazine industry has significantly advanced since the

internet has existed. Publishers can now publish their magazines and publications online and most magazines have their own website with free, extra content that isn’t necessarily included in the actual magazine. Technology has now become significantly important to the magazine industry and it wouldn’t be the same without it today. Below are some images of NMEs website and smart phone app.

Having these extra digital features can improve their readership and help them to obtain a wider audience. Also it is a money making scheme e.g. the NME app is 69p

InDesign and Photoshop are commonly used in the magazine industry to design magazines and edit them. I have taken real magazine design on board and thus used InDesign and Photoshop to help me create my magazine.

INDESIGN- TEXT FUNCTIONS

Drop capital

Font and size Text position

Font and size

Spacing between letters and italics Text fill and

outline (colour)

Margins

These are all of the basic features that I had to use in order to edit the text on my magazine design, and that are used to create magazine in the industry. I got to grips with them quite easily and used them to the best of my ability. I think InDesign is a good program to use to create magazines, rather than Photoshop.

INDESIGN- IMAGE

Length and width of image and placeholder

Height of image and placeholder

Rotate and flip the image

Fill and outline (colour) and thickness/ brightness

Effects such as drop shadow and inner bevel

Image wrap

Final result using these features:

This is a simple image of a barcode from Google. First, I set up a placeholder to import the image into. To import the image I selected file, place and browsed for my image. Once it was placed in the placeholder I adjusted the width, length and height accordingly and I used the rotation icon to rotate the image slightly. I found InDesign pretty easy to used when it came to importing images and placing them appropriately etc.

CONCLUSION- SKILLS AUDIT