Evaluation Question 6

During the development of my magazine I have used many
pieces of software and technology to help me design and create my magazine as
well as organise my work. The programs I used during the process of development
were Blogger, Photoshop, flickr, DaFont, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint
and Slideshare. Though these programs and websites helped me in my work, there
can be problems while using them, especially with the free websites such as
Blogger and flickr.


Blogger was useful to me during my work as it has helped me
upload all my work for people to publicly view. I can keep all my work
organised through the “label” on my blog and it also allows me and others to
print out any work I may have put up whenever I want. I can also edit my work
whenever I want if I want to change it. The personalisation of my blog can help
give my work something special about it and give it its own “personal touch.”
One disadvantage of using free sites like Blogger is that the people who own it
have the right to take down your blog should they expect you to be a “robot,” a
person or program who sets up blogs or email addresses in order to spam people
with advertisements or dodgy offers. When accused like this, the blog user will
have some warning and a period of notice, though after this, there is not much
you can do about saving the blog, aside from creating another blog and posting
all of your files/ work from the first onto the second.

Adobe’s Photoshop program was extremely useful when creating
my magazine, as it was the program I made it on from scratch. Using this
program I could edit all my pictures I use on it as well as build up layers and
shapes to morph them into finished products. Firstly I would take a template such
as a front cover from KERRANG and then use the opacity tool to make
it fade into the background. With the faint template there I would then build
layers on top of each other to represent the structure of the template, such as
placing my pictures over the pictures from the template. Using tools like outer
glow and stroke I can highlight my pictures of my band to make them glow while
highlighting shapes and text to stop them from blurring into each other. The
help of these tools are extremely useful and without them people could not hope
to design top quality magazines as they do today.

Flickr was useful to me when wanting to evaluate images and
work such as my college magazine, as using this website people can add tags to
any photo they want and write about them in detail. This was much more useful
in some cases when uploading images than blogger due to the tag feature. Some
problems can occur from use of free websites like this one. As stated in what I
wrote about blogger, users do not have full control over their account and it
can be removed by flickr if they deem it necessary. There may also be certain
glitches and problems when trying to upload images or when viewing them.

DaFont is a website that allows anyone to download user made
fonts and add them to their work. This was very useful when making my Mast
Head, as I could use a unique font that relates to my magazine, its audience
and name of the magazine. For example, my magazine was called “pulse” and so I
used a font that has a heart rate pulse that runs through the centre of all the
letters.

Microsoft word and Microsoft PowerPoint were very useful
when doing written work. When I needed to write large amounts of text such as
my article, I would write it in Microsoft word first to check for grammar and
spelling mistakes, as Photoshop does not have a spell/ grammar check system. With
Microsoft PowerPoint I can arrange a short powerpoint that will show all my
work but in a aesthetically pleasing way, such as using backgrounds and
animations, and looks a lot nicer than just posting up work with no
personalisation.

Using the website Slideshare I was also able to upload all
of my PowerPoints directly to the internet and then to my blog. This is useful
as I can import the entire of my PowerPoint and be able to view it online,
rather than having to download it from a link or taking screenshots of each
slide and posting them on one by one.