The document discusses the technologies used to create a product and what was learned from using each one. Photoshop was used to make text and designs stand out more on pages. Blogger allowed categorizing posts, including slides and surveys, and learning HTML embedding. Dafont expanded options for fonts. Survey Monkey, PowerPoint and Excel helped with research collection and presentation. A digital camera, USB cable and computer were essential for photo editing and transferring files. While most software choices increased quality, basic alternatives could have worked with sacrifices to professionalism and audience engagement. Both benefits and limitations of technology reliance were discussed.

1. Evaluation
What Have You Learnt About
Technologies from the Process of
Constructing This Product?

2. Software used
• Photoshop
• Blogger (Blogspot)
• Dafont
• Slideshare
• Powerpoint
• Survey Monkey
• Windows Movie Maker
• Excel

3. Preliminary -> Final Product
(Adobe) Photoshop
I used Photoshop at the start of the coursework and at the end; initially for the
preliminary task, then for final magazine production. I learnt a lot between the two
main tasks; mainly because I had learnt how I had to attract my audience through my
research.
I learnt that I had to make my text stand out from the page if I wanted it to really
jump out at the audience. Regular, flat, black text along with a relatively 2D cover
page did not look very professional, whereas once I started using layer effects –
blending options. I abused Bevel & Emboss in order to make everything really stand
out from the background, whilst using inner and outer shadows to make it look like
the ‘floating text’ was merely floating props in the mise en scene.

4. Preliminary -> Research - > Final Product -> Evaluation
Blogger
• After creating multiple blog posts with all of my research and creations, I
realised a couple of things. For myself, finding individual posts to go back
and edit became a chore; and from the public’s point of view and the size
of each post resulted in the same thing. The easy way to get around the
main issue with both was to create labels; categories so I could find all of
my preliminary task posts, all of my analytical research etc etc. I then
chose to put my blog in the flipchart format, so that the majority of posts
could all be seen on one page, with the option of clicking them to view
them in full.
• I had to use HTML in order to include slides from slideshare, making use of
Blogger’s ‘embed’ feature.
• I also made use of bloggers image uploading tool and hyperlinks to direct
blogreaders to my survey when I needed results for audience research.
As I had never used Blogger before, all of these things were new to me.

5. Final Product
Dafont
• In order to make my magazine more attractive and appropriate for
the audience, I had to deviate away from fonts built into the
machine; Dafont is a database full of user created fonts of all
varieties. This was particularly useful in finding the likes of novelty
fonts (e.g. Lion King, Will and Grace), and fonts appropriate to my
‘Electronica’ theme (Hyperspace, 2 lines, Circuit, Alien Encounter).
The fonts are all categorised in order to filter them. I found that the
‘Techno’ category was most appropriate due to fact that it has
connotations of electric, due to it being a predominantly ‘sequenced’
genre.
• I learnt that all it took to integrate my new fonts with Microsoft Word
and other text applications, was to open the ‘fonts’ file on the hard-
drive, and copy and paste the downloaded file.

6. Research -> Final Product - > Evaluation
Slideshare
• Slideshare is fairly easy to use, as it just involves creating an account
(either through registering an email address, or linking the account
through integration with facebook (or linkd)) and uploading any
powerpoints you have saved on your harddrive.
• Like with Youtube and Instagram, you can apply tags to your posts so they
come up in searches.
• Slideshare uses the code ‘html’ in order to embed the powerpoint onto
other webpages. This is came in handy when it came to embedding
powerpoints into my blog, as I could keep all the formatting etc (which I
would not have been able to do had I copy + pasted from Microsoft Word).
• I had always struggled with converting various types of documents into
formats suitable for blogger. I usually resorted to making things on
publisher, and saving them as a jpeg to upload them as an image.
Slideshare made everything a lot easier once I discovered it, as I could
write everything up in powerpoint and upload it straight away.

7. Research
Survey Monkey
• I used survey monkey during my research to gather
results about the types of people who buy
magazines.
• The free version of the site allowed me to
compose 10 questions to use in my survey.
• I learnt that, in order to ensure all of the questions
are answered, I could tick the ‘require an answer
to this question box’ so that the results would not
be submitted unless all questions were answered
(and the participants would be asked to fill them
in).
• I assumed my only option would be to post a link
to the survey for friends to take it, but I learnt that
there were four different ways to distribute it.
– I could use html, send a URL, share it on Facebook or
email a link to a friend.
I learnt that a downside to the website was that, if I
wanted to collect the results, download them import a
picture of them, I had to pay. To get around this, I took the
results for each individual question and inputted them
into Microsoft EXCEL to create pie charts, print screen
them, save the images as a .jpg.

8. Research -> Evaluation
Powerpoint
• Powerpoint is fairly easy to use. But I made
use of the bullet point feature combined with
indenting in order to create ‘subpoints’, which
I found fairly useful.

9. Hardware
• Digital camera
• Micro usb 2.0 cable
• Hand-held audio recorder
• PC

10. Preliminary – Final Product
Digital Camera
• Canon 600D
• The camera’s photos are 18mp
– High resolution photos meant that if
I was to zoom in to edit aspects, it
wouldn’t pixelate, which would
cause issues when it comes to detail
– I learnt how to adjust the focus on
the lens manually – most phones
and many cameras nowadays rely on
autofocus, so it was good to learn
how to adjust the lens manually in
order to find my own preference
(predominantly when zooming)

11. Preliminary – Final Product
Micro USB 2 Cable
• Having moments where I
had to connect the camera
to the PC, and moments
where I would connect a
card-reader to the
After using the cable to transfer
PC, showed me that the a song from my phone to the PC
micro-usb 2.0 cables are (for background music for an
universal. interview), I pulled the cord out
of the pc without ‘safely
removing hardware’, which I
learnt could damage my phone’s
hardrive, aswell as corrupt data
from both sources.

12. Was Technology a Necessity?
• Most Hardware was needed.
– If I didn’t have a pc to work on, I could never have made use of ANY of
the technology listed throughout this powerpoint
– If I didn’t have a camera, I would not be able take pictures of a high
enough resolution to use in my magazine, I wouldn’t have been able to
attract audience through the images and I would not have been able
to have had any visual representations or links to my article.
– If I didn’t have a Microusb 2 Cable, I would not have been able to
connect the camera to the PC to get the photos off it, nor would I have
been able to retrieve the photos off of the memory card unless I used
a PC with a memory card reader built in, or a memory card reader that
went straight to usb.
– The handheld recorder was not a necessity. I could have videoed an
interview (e.g on my phone), or just wrote down the interview word
for word, but recording it on a recorder was convenient and good
sound quality.

13. • If I wanted to sacrifice quality, most software could have been done
without
– If I wanted to make an amateur looking magazine with unedited
photos, flat text etc, I could have used publisher instead of Photoshop.
– I could have created a Facebook group or page instead of a Blogspot
page for my portfolio, but as Facebook is not a site dedicated to
blogs, and has much more frequent posts daily, my blog would go
entirely unnoticed, not be taken as seriously, and it wouldn’t be
posted in that appropriate a place (though it would work at least).
Blogger is a blog site though, so none of this would apply.
– Dafont wasn’t a necessity; I could have chosen inbuilt fonts and used
the likes of bevel, emboss etc to make them more exciting, but the
magazine would look a lot less interesting if I’d stuck to conventional
Microsoft typefaces.
– I could have used another program than Powerpoint, e.g. continued
with publisher, saving as an image etc, though Powerpoint (with
slideshare) is a lot more convenient.
– Lack of slideshare would render Powerpoint (in this case) useless.
– I used windows movie maker so that I could upload the sound file
from the music interview straight from the PC to Blogger. It wasn’t a
necessity, just incredibly convenient
– I wasn’t compelled to use Excel to record the results for my survey, but
it allowed me to make them a lot more attractive to look at than just
writing them would.

14. Technology
(General) Positives (General) Negatives
• Allows people to be creative without being • Becomes something you have to rely on
able to draw or create things in real life • Can crash
• Technology is things created to make • (Often) takes time to understand
certain things in life easier • Cameras, Phones and recorders run out
• Saves time of battery very fast, and take a while to
• Practical charge
• Allows for easy, efficient duplication • Crashes and has bugs
• Ideal for marketing
Applied Positives Applied Negatives
• Allowed me to find out lots of • If I forgot to save, or the pc
information for my research crashed, I would lose all my
instantly, no need for work
communication or permission
• Allows me to create things
without the use of physical
materials
• I could go back, delete things I
didn’t like and amend mistakes