Evaluation- Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Fireworks

Fireworks is the software in which I used to create layers onto a photo to create the pages of my magazine for my coursework. The software is used for a number of different things, you can slightly edit photos, add text to an image, or create pieces of work like I have for my rock magazine.
At the start I had no idea how to use the software. The most interesting thing to learn about was changing how the text looked on all of my pages I have created.

There are lot of different effects in which I could include on my texts, changing the colour, the sharpness, the effects behind it, the texture it looks like. These factors all changed the way that the text looked, which could change the way that the audience thought about the page. All of these features are very important to follow key conventions of the genre of music magazine I am doing.

My favourite feature of how I changed my text was using either the drop shadow, or the glow effect. The drop shadow purely changed how much depth my text went back. Using this effect helped to make the text more clear to read in parts of my page with a similar colour background, for example a light background and a white text. The drop shadow would give a dark edge around the text, making it easier to read. The other effect, glow, there would be a second background to the text as well as the image. This would be more suitable for the text in which were dark and had a dark background, the light glow behind would make the text stand out, making it easier for the audience to read.

The final thing I liked to learn was the use of the different fonts, there was such a variety to choose from, which made it easier for me to edit, instead of having to go on websites such as http://cooltext.com/ or http://www.dafont.com/. Instead I could look at the fonts I had and change the colour and size to make the text look different. My favourite fonts were, Algerian, Bernard MT, Copperplate Gothic Bold, and Adobe Caslon Pro. These looked similar to other fonts used in existing products, which helped me to follow their key conventions, appealing more to my audiences.

Flickr

Flickr was another technology that I had never really used. 

I found Flickr very easy to use to store my pictures. I liked how I could make sure there were separate albums for each set of photos that I took. However one feature that I did not like about Flickr was how long it would take to download a big block of photos. This would make the process slightly slower and would make me move back some of the things I was going to do.
On the other hand I liked the use of Flickr as it was easy to create a slide show and embed it onto my blog so that I could easy show the photos that I had taken at different times.

Thinglink 

Thinglink is a website that has really helped me throughout this coursework. I think it is really good how I can click and write my analysis on that specific point. I had never used thinglink before and was really easy to navigate through. I also liked how I was able to insert photos and videos onto my analysis text to help develop my points futher, for example adding videos of the bands that were included on the front cover of this magazine, helped me to feel as if I was explaining my point in another way than just reading. By listening to the song it would be clear to understand the audience and the type of representations that this genre portrays.
The final good feature of using thinglink for my coursework is the fact that I was able to easily embed this code onto my blog without having to search through the site to find it.

BeFunky.com

 BeFunky is a website which is used to edit photos, so that I could include them in my magazine pages. Within this website I was able to change the colour of facial features, such as lips, eyes, haircolour. I was also able to change the colour of the image altogether such as change the Hue, saturation and contrast. These simple editing skills were helpful for my images as some of them could of been considered too bright to include in my rock magazine, as they would of looked too jolly, therefore I could of changed the brightness of the images in order to make them look more dull and creepy for my audience. I was also able to change the size, and structure of the images, for example on my front cover, there are thumbnail images at the bottom that look like polaroid images. Due to the website I was able to change the frames and backgrounds of my images to make them look like they had been taken off a polaroid camera. Here are some examples:

Presentation Websites

I have used a list of different presentation wesbsites that I could use for research, feedback ect. Here is a list of different websites that I have used

• Emaze
• Prezi
• Piktochart
• moovly
• powtoon
• Zoho
• Microsoft powerpoint
• Survey Monkey
• kizoa
• Bubbl 
• Sound cloud
• Canva
• Freeonlinesurveys

I think that my favourite websites to use would be prezi, moovly and survey monkey. 

For prezi I love the amount of choice you have for the style of presentation that you want to create. I think that having a selection of different styles can really help to show who your audience is, what you are presenting and the tone you have as a presenter. This also helps to enhance your creativity on how you want to get your message across, With Prezi, it is easy to be able to insert images, videos, links instead of having to click onto the link to transfer you onto another tab. 

With moovly I thought that this was a very interesting layout to a presenation website. It is very child friendly and it is easy to make the presentation as childlike or serious as you like. I did use moovly for my evaluation question 2. However I was unable to embed the presentation onto my blog, so I did not use it in the end. I liked the amount of variety it had on its own website, such as images, fonts and colours. To be able to explain my representations, I also included a soundtrack to my presentation so that it was more clear to understand. 

Suveymonkey is a website that you can make free surveys to distribute to your audience. I like this website as it is easy to navigate yourself round and it is not very complicated. There is a wide choice of the styles of questions you can use to make it more interesting for your audience. I could also include pictures so that the audience could see what I was referencing to during my questionnaire. However the images could not be attached to the question, they would have to be one below. I also liked how easy it was to access the results of my survey. However one improvement would be so that I could embed this onto my blog so that it is easily accessable for my audience. Therefore in that sense I did like the 'freeonlinesurvey's more.