Essential Milestones

Here i have listed the ten key developments in the production of technology that I consider to be most beneficial to me as a graphic designer whilst creating our group magazine.

1861 - The first colour photograph by Clerk Maxwell.

For the magazine project based on Birmingham, being able to take photographs in colour, helped us capture street photography, portraying fashion elements of  the people in Birmingham. People express there self through fashion, colour is a major part of fashion, as it's a way of embracing your personality or mood, and an opportunity to be different. Without colour photographs it would be much more difficult to expose the extreme fashion in Birmingham, as colour plays a major part in creating a bold fashion statement.

1948 - Colour scanner invented by Kodak

For my experimentation on the magazine, to make some of the illustrations more meaningful and express the message further, I experimented with inks and watercolour, which I scanned in using a colour scanner. Without a colour scanner this would have limited by creativeness, and restricted what I can do with my magazine.

1971 - Email invented by Ray Tomlinson 

Email is a great way of communication with fellow students in the group, as well as sharing ideas, and discussing different notions further. However this type of communication benefited me most for my magazine when i wanted to make contact with creatives, to set up interviews and find out more about their style and way of working.

1987 - Adobe Illustrator launched 

For some of the content in our group magazine project, Illustrator has had a huge impact on helping create a style for some of the illustrations, giving the design a clean cut edge, to make them more appealing towards the target audience. With Illustrator it lets you create illustrations in your own way, and make render the art work if you wish to develop the design further.

1990 - Adobe Photoshop launched

Photoshop plays a major part in the development of the magazine, by enhancing the use of colour in photography and illustration, as well as the overall visual image for the content. Using different filters and affects gives me the opportunity to create a mood, or express a message further. With all the different design tools, it provides me with freedom to render, edit and create powerful content to my audiences taste. 

1993 - Adobe Acrobat launched

Adobe Acrobat is software that helps you convert other formats into PDF files, that can be accessible from all computers such as Windows and Macs. This is a necessity when doing the magazine, otherwise I wouldn't of been able to convert the InDesign file into a PDF format to publish on ISSUU. 

1996 - Internet Explorer released by Microsoft 

The use of the Internet, has been a major way of being able to research practitioners that are contemporary and historical, to help develop and influence my work. It has also made me aware of what is already on the market, so I can differentiate my magazine from competitors. As our group magazine will be published online, this is a key development for technology, as without the internet the target audience wouldn't be able to view the magazine.

1999 - Adobe InDesign and PressReady launched

Without the software of InDesign, I wouldn't be able to produce a magazine publication. With InDesign being a publishing application, it's essential I use this software when creating a magazine to deliver a high quality standard. It also gives you the opportunity to import Photoshop and Illustrator files, so you can have all different formats combined together in InDesign.

2006 - Apple start using Intel chips

When Apple started using Intel chip processors, it made the software and programs run much faster and smoothly. As I use multiple software to help develop my design work for the magazine, the Intel processor is a major part that helps me multitask and get my design work done much quicker. The development in Intel processors has enabled them to provide turbo boost technology in the latest Intel chips, which automatically speeds up your computer when you need extra performance, this handles complex software and makes it run much faster benefiting me as a graphic designer.

2008 - PDF version 1.7 becomes an official ISO standard (ISO 32000)

As the magazine is going to be published on ISSUU, i need to convert my magazine into a PDF format on InDesign, in order to upload the magazine onto ISSUU. Online advertising is a great way to connect to my particular target audience, without being able to convert my magazine into a PDF I would be restricted choosing what format to deliver the group magazine, as I wouldn't be able to communicate with viewers through the internet online.