1. 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
From using the various pieces of software, techniques and equipment which make up the
technologies for this magazine, I have learnt that the gulf in quality from this year’s work is a lot
higher than that of our year 10/11 film magazine coursework. Throughout the production of my
year 10 coursework, I never had a real understanding of what the software was fully capable of or
how the camera shot could look a thousand times better than another one, just but dimming a bit of
light. In all honesty, I took a lot of the software for granted in year 10 and 11 – and just accepted
that it was capable of a lot of different things, which made making a magazine very easy. However,
this year’s coursework has proved to be a lot more difficult than that of year 10. I have had to learn
how to use a new piece of software (InDesign) and I have had to learn a number of keyboard
shortcuts which make life a lot easier when creating a piece of work on InDesign.
Adobe InDesign has been a predominant piece of software in the construction of my magazine.
Unlike Photoshop, InDesign is a lot easier to use. But this actually proved to be a bigger problem for
me than other people. Having used Photoshop from the end of year 9 to the end of year 11, it had
become a piece of software that I was used to and could use without a large number of problems. So
having to learn and adjust to using InDesign was a challenge in itself. However, despite my various
problems when learning to use InDesign, I felt a lot more professional when using it. This was
probably due to my teacher explaining how a lot of people who write for magazines will be able to
conjure up a professional looking double page spread article in just a few hours and sometimes less.
As well as this motivation from my teacher, the fact that I had learnt to use shortcuts was something
which made my life a lot easier and my work a lot better.
At first, I had to learn the basics. But with anything you’re practicing, the basics are the most
important thing. Shortcuts such as (Ctrl Z) for undo and (Ctrl +) for zoom were the simplest of
shortcuts, but they sped up the process of creating my magazine by quite a margin. Because of these
little shortcuts, I was able to identify a mistake and get rid of it faster than I would have done if I had
actually clicked on the undo button. The zoom shortcut helped me to identify a mistake that had
been made.
There were also some features which I have learnt that helped me to produce a professional looking
magazine.
The first feature was the text to fit shape feature. I used this for my double page spread article. To
make my text fit perfectly onto the page without it overlapping or covering my pictures, I used the
feature so that all of the text I had chosen would automatically fit around the picture closest to it.
This meant that my page looked nice and tidy, giving it a professional feel.
Another feature of InDesign that I used to make my life easier was the grouping feature. It seems
simple and very basic, but the grouping feature allows you to group a certain amount of things
together so that you can move them around as a group and not individually. This was very helpful

2. for when I was writing down article titles, page numbers and descriptions for my contents page, as
well as cover lines and box out text.
When taking pictures for my magazine, I learnt a few decent tricks and lessons about the camera I
was using.
First of all, I learnt that standing too close to the studio lights when taking a picture would make your
picture come out blurry and orb looking. You would not be able to see the person or object you had
taken a picture of because the light intensity would be too much.
When going outside of the studio to take pictures, my teacher told me that I needed to switch the
camera settings to “AV”. By doing this, the camera was able to take a clear picture without the help
of the studio lights. Because the studio was dark, the camera setting for the studio required the light
of the studio lamps to help get a better picture. But when I changed to AV, it did not require the
studio lights anymore.
Adobe Photoshop was another piece of software that I used for my magazine, but this was only used
once for my front cover picture. Luckily for me, I could remember all of the steps that were
necessary for editing a picture on Photoshop. There were no real features or techniques used other
than the standard and basic procedures.
The benefits of using technologies such as Adobe InDesign and different camera settings is that they
are simplistic and highly effective. Adobe InDesign is far easier to use than Photoshop, meaning that
using InDesign is a lot quicker overall. InDesign offers a wider range of features which are even
easier to use than on Photoshop. This is beneficial to anybody who is using this software because it
means that they can create a better magazine in a shorter amount of time, with it maintaining a
professional look!