talks about technologies I have used when creating my media product and the challenges that I faced

1. Technology

2. WIX.COM
Throughout the production, construction and evaluation of my music magazine, I have used
Wix.com to record all information and track my journey throughout the whole process. In doing
this, I have learnt a great deal about the WIX editing site such as how to create links to different
pages, How to insert image galleries, how to size and scale images and texts, How to import links
and images from external webpages, how to upload my own images and all in all construct a
presentable website. It is important that I created an interesting and easily navigated website in
order to clearly show my steps throughout the process. Before this editing process, I had never
used Wix before so had no initial knowledge when I began to plan my magazine. However, I believe
my knowledge of and skills on Wix have improved significantly from when I first began to use the
site as I can now navigate my way around the site and know how to use the basic tools. However,
my knowledge and skills on wix and website construction as a whole could be improved further by
looking at additional tools wix offers in order to edit and upload elements such as texts and images
in a more advanced but interesting way. Furthermore, I could have looked at more existing sites to
decide which tools on wix would allow me to create a more professional and presentable look for
my information.

3. Survey Monkey
As part of my research, I decided that it was important to get my target audience’s thoughts and opinions
on music magazines –especially pop music magazines. I wanted a wide range of results and I decided that
this may be impractical to do in person using a paper questionnaire so I decided to use the easy to use
site – Service Monkey. I had never used this site before but I found it very straightforward to construct
my questionnaire and it was very easy to distribute to my target audience for feedback as it has the
option to share on Facebook and the link to the questionnaire could also be sent over private messenger.
I thought this was a very successful and vital decision as part of my research as it gave me an insight to
the needs, interests and expectations of my target audience. I decided not to send my questionnaire to
my fellow media students as they are not the same age as my target audience and it Is my target
audience’s age that contributes massively to the type of features used so their feedback was more
important to me.

4. D7 & D10 Camera’s
I had not used the college camera’s before but I decided to use college’s own digital
cameras to take the photographs needed for my magazine in order for my images to be
high quality and give a professional look to my magazine. Whilst using the cameras I learnt
how to change the focus and zoom of the camera as well allowing me to experiment with a
range of different styled shots. Due to taking a wide variety of shots it allowed me to
select the best quality and positioned ones for my magazines. However, my camera skills
could be improved further as I did not experiment with the aperture of the lens meaning
that sometimes I found my images were too light or too dark due to just using the set
aperture.

5. Adobe Photoshop
I have had no previous experience on photoshop so struggled at first, however throughout
the process I began to gain more and more skills throughout the process allowing me
eventually to show off the skills and techniques that I gained. I began to construct my
website using the basic shape, text and colour tools in order to form the basis of my
magazine which I found fairly straight forward. However, I began to use more advanced
tools such as the spot healing tool brush, magic background eraser, magnetic lasso and
colour adjustment tool, contrast and brightness settings and the blur and smudge tools. I
found that I had to be patient when using these tools in order to edit my image precisely
and give my images a professional look. I do believe my magazine could be improved
further as I could’ve used for advanced and complex tools when designing my masthead
instead of doing it when I only had basic skills and knowledge of photoshop.

6. Popplet & Prezi
As part of my evaluation, I have had to use a range of different technologies. Two sites I have
used are Popplet and Prezi which are types of presentation sites. I had not used any of sites
before but I found them quite simple and straightforward to use and their simplistic layout
style makes displaying information very easy easy.