‘’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?

The development in digital technology has allowed consumers of these specific technologies to become producers of their own original pieces. In my experience of creating a school magazine front cover and contents page and a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread, my creativity had developed greatly with the use of various digital technologies used in new and different ways.

Firstly my preliminary task was to create a magazine suitable for schools. I used a PC in this task to help me because of the ease of access both at school and at home and the different types of software available to help me create the magazine. An example of the software i used is Microsoft word; I used this to upload my images, text, and overall layout to create the magazine on. In this task I used little else to help me in terms of creativity and construction in the magazine, however when I came to planning and constructing my music magazine I was able to take full advantage of all different aspects of the PC software. In the planning stages in particular of the music magazine, I made use of the internet and in terms of creativity it helped me greatly to brainstorm many different ideas about typical conventions such as fonts, layouts, colour use and house style. I did this by creating mind maps of existing products. I also used Microsoft word to help planning, I created a questionnaire for the magazine to find what my target audience were looking for in a magazine.

In my preliminary task I knew little about how to make my magazine look as professional and high quality as possible, I did not include any special effects in images and did not take into consideration things such as lighting, positioning, location and mise en scene of my images. However in my main task I learnt that these aspects of images were very important to the overall effect of the magazine. One way in which I improved my images was to mind map ideas about what aspects would look best and keep to the correct genre of my magazine. I used a digital camera in both tasks but improved the images in my music magazine by taking into consideration the most important aspects of images. Such as bright lighting, dark costume and I also used post-production on my image fixer on my laptop to create the very best look for all my images.

In the school magazine I chose to use just the PC, however in the music magazine I was able to use a pen drive to quickly swap between PC and laptop as there was a wider range of software on the laptop. On the laptop I was also able to easily change the colours and layout of the magazine so that I could test what looked best and fitted with the original indie genre. Another advantage of this is that I was able to email work across and get opinions on what needs improving.