Natasha learned several skills related to technology from creating her music magazine. She improved at using a DSLR camera to take professional photos for the cover. When designing the cover in Photoshop, Natasha found it easy to insert images and stretch them due to practice. She customized fonts, colors, and layouts to make the cover visually appealing and convey the pop punk genre. Overall, Natasha gained experience with software like Photoshop and skills like competitive cover design to create a magazine resembling professional media products.

1. Question 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
By Natasha Tandy

2. When it came to creating my front cover, contents page, and double page spread for my music magazine Unplugged I found it
easier to use the tools necessary on the software's to help make my magazine look more professional and like a real media
product. As I had developed my skills from creating my college magazine for the preliminary task I had improved in several
different areas of technology such as using a DSLR camera, using the soft ware Photoshop and quark express and other online
resources such as blogger, slide share, Prezi and Emaze. This overall made my experience more achievable.
Using a camera:
When it came to taking my photographs for my front cover of my magazine Unplugged I used a DSLR camera to capture the
perfect image which would captivate and draw in the audience. As I had used this camera before when creating my college
magazine for the preliminary task I knew how to use it to the best standard to achieve the best angle, focus and lighting. When
deciding the angle of my image I knew I wanted it to be quite close up to show the subjects face which conveys attitude and pop
punk therefore I did a medium close up. I used natural lighting when taking my images as I took them outside and no other
lighting was necessary. When comparing both my front cover images for my music magazine and my college magazine it is clearly
visible that my skills when using an DSLR camera have improved just from the quality of the image and the subjects body
language and facial expression. This is because in my college magazine the subject looks awkward and uncomfortable whereas on
my music magazine the subject looks confident and has a bold expression on her face conveying attitude and my genre pop punk.

3. The first step I followed when creating my music magazine front cover on the
technology Photoshop was inserting my main image, which after creating my
college magazine preliminary task I found extremely easy for me as I have had
practise. Once I inserted my image I wanted to stretch the image so it would
zoom in to cut off the extra part of the image which was unnecessary. The
reason I did this is because I felt that by having it focused on the subjects face it
would convey more attitude and confident once again showing the genre pop
punk.
the second step I followed was adding a masthead at the top of my front cover.
I wanted to ensure that my masthead was captivating and caught the
audiences attention, therefore I changed the font to a unique font which
conveys the genre pop punk and changed the colour to bright red to fit into my
colour scheme and overall make it bolder.

4. The next step I completed was adding a skyline above the masthead, which
reads ‘Once in a lifetime opportunity! Win VIP tickets to see Mcfly
perform!’ the purpose of this is to attract the audience to my magazine as if
they see this and like gigs they will more than likely be persuaded to
purchase my magazine. The reason I added a competition in my skyline is
because my target audience is 16-25 year olds which is the typical age
range of people who enjoy going to gigs as a hobby.
I then added a splash onto my front cover which I positioned underneath
the masthead at the side of the page. This again is another competition for
a gig as I'm confident that this will easily attract my target audience. I
changed the colour of the splash to green and the font to black and white
to ensure that it stands out and fit into my colour scheme to help the
magazine look more visually appealing.

5. I then added a banner at the bottom of my front cover which lists many
different bands which are featured within my magazine, the purpose of this is
to give the audience a tease of the different people which they can read
about. By doing this if a potential customer sees the banner and they are a
fan of one of the bands listed they might be swayed into purchasing my
magazine. Once again I changed the colour to green as I wanted it to fit my
colour scheme and make my front cover look creative and colourful.
I then quickly added my barcode at the bottom of my front cover on the
end of the banner with the issue number, date of release and price listed
above. These are all necessary as without them the magazine wont be
able to be purchased and customers will be left unsatisfied if they are
unsure on information which they might desire.
The second to last step in creating my music magazine front cover was
adding my cover lines. And as shown In the image above all together I added
6 cover lines which I positioned in a line down the left hand side of the page.
When deciding my cover lines I wanted them to be intriguing and interesting
to lure in customers therefore I added teases which would make the
audience feel compelled into purchasing the magazine so they could find out
more. I put the artist name in a different font which was black and bold so
that was the first thing which caught peoples attention then underneath I
added a caption of information which I changed to white to fit my colour
scheme and make the front cover overall look more visually appealing.

6. The last step I did to complete my music magazine and to ensure that all codes and conventions
of real media products had been followed was add my main cover line which is the biggest and
most important cover line. I added the subjects name first in the bigger font which reads
‘Heather Bates’ and changed the font to one which I felt conveyed pop punk as much as
possible. Underneath this I added a caption of information which would interest the audience
and the subjects fans and make them want to purchase the magazine to learn more about
Heather touring with Busted. I changed this to a different font and colour as I wanted ‘Heather
Bates’ to be the main attraction. But also by doing this is fits in with the colour scheme and
looks more visually appealing.