“Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers”. In your own experience, how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework productions?
Digital technology has become a very important concept in the process of designing my product of a school magazine. Through this year in the process I have learnt a lot of ideas of how to design my magazine from the use of digital media technology.
My school magazine is a starter of how everything goes and what goals I have to achieve. One of the main use of digital technology is that I could use the diversity of the internet, this enabled me to research the basics required to create a magazine. The internet was more achievable in a way that researching information is compact so you don’t have to deal with the bother of going to places such as the library. With the internet I could look up the type of features such as fonts, layout and house style, with such so I could analyse how existing magazines differ from each other, along with conventions. Furthermore, information can be almost endless so researching the information can be reliable with the right keywords, although there may be some information which might not relate to what you were searching for in the first place. Digital technology is very helpful when designing my product, as many problems such as creating mess does not happen when using software’s such as Microsoft word or publisher for example, and that with just a click of the mouse you could create all types of interesting ideas without having to draw everything out by hand. Also using word it is more convenient to brainstorm ideas through the use of mind maps, which can be designed easily. Along with that, all the research and images can be stored in a memory stick, having a compact, small and easy transport.
Digital technology has helped me become more creative in designing a magazine. Using a software such as Microsoft publisher helps me experiment with the design of the magazine, as I can choose what to do with this image for example, whether to add brightness or contrast to the image without having to fear of being unable to redo the changes made. Using a digital camera rather than a computer built-in camera is something I had learned to take care of; it was very effective at making more precision shots and it is a lot more easier to control. Without digital technology, I wasn’t prepared to make a plan for how I was going to draft the colour scheme on paper, so it was more convenient to use Microsoft publisher and word of its quickness and ease.
Another feature of using digital technology is that I could email my work to the teachers if I can’t submit in it paper form. Once again, this can be transported through the use of the memory stick. From sending the work to the teachers I could receive feedback on the work for what needs to be improved, ect. This process helped me into what I could do in order to improve the magazine, as the teachers on occasions may not be available, so the efficiency of using email is helpful in digital technology. Also, the speed of the mailing system depends if both users are online so you may get feedback straight away or that they would have to wait for the receiver to reply back. All of the work done is on the computer. A more compact version would be to use laptop. Rather having to use a stationary pc at home or school, having a laptop means that you could work on the design of the magazine at anyplace anytime. The laptop is small and convenient, so transportation of my work to anyplace allows me to continue without having to stay at one place so I could allow myself more time to complete my magazine.
