Unit 03 – Awareness of Converging Digital Technology within the Creative Media Sector

Digital Technology is a colossal part of the creative media sector. This is because we have became more and more reliant on computers and other devices such as printers, telephones/mobile phones etc. The internet and computers have created so many jobs that if it wasnt for those devices, could never exist. Such as web designers, computer/console game designers and the like. Computers have became such a big part of everyones lives simply because it has speeded up the workplaces, made everything much easier to handle and organise, and frees up time for other things that previously might have taken a much much longer duration.

Copyright plays a huge role in the creative sector as if you have a certain design that you have created yourself and you specifically dont want anyone to copy/recreate what you have done, you can stop them by copyrighting it under your name and/or company. The only way they could copy or recreate it legally is if you gave them the privileges to do so. If they did so illegally you can take the person to court and sew. Also with copyright, file sharing is legal if the files you are sharing are not copyrighted files such as songs/movies/tv series etc.

Converging technology is means to transfer different formats/using visual and audio at the same time . Converging technology has made a huge impact to everyone, including the workplace. Web designers, for example, have a much easier job as they can now put both visual and audible formats on their websites. What this does is creates another aspect of the website to get information across, and to advertise also on their websites if necessary. It also helps certain people if you say wanted a tutorial on something, some people are auditory learners, some are visual. This creates a much easier way of teaching people in the workplace etc as they will learn much more efficiently.

The audiences will get less and less surprised as technology evolves, as they get higher expectations. This will then lead to creating a healthy competition to expand the creative media as there is a certain expectation of better quality each time something new has been created.

The multi - platformed approach that businesses have been taking branches out to other audiences, as it doesnt just focus on a small base of people, it applies to literally every one. for instance Orange have started to use Microsoft Windows in their phones, that has now branched out windows, which was only really for computers previously.

Converging technology can easily be exploited because you could use it for evidence in a murder trial. e.g. a video with no audio is nothing compared to a video with matching audio giving harder evidence.

YouTube is one of the biggest websites for videos and uses converging technology in most of their videos. It can be accessed from things such as computers, Macs and consoles. It is widely used all around the world due to its ease to find copyrighted music and clips from a movie and also the option to upload your own content for the world to see for free. You can also make a living out of making YouTube videos as you get paid for creating the videos from how many views you get.

Unit 02 - Communicating and Presenting Ideas in the Creative Media Sector

1. There are many different ways in which you can communicate, such as:

• Telephone - good to use when you want to talk to someone for a small period of time, as it can get expensive if you talk for longer periods of time. Better than e-mail in the sense that you are talking to the person directly.
• E-mail - totally free to use, but can be very inefficient as the person you have e-mailed may take a long time to reply back, and you cannot get a proper feeling of a persons personality and emotions through an e-mail sometimes as you are not talking to them directly.
• Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) - These are programs such as Skype, these programs are very useful in the way of saving money as it is free to call your contacts so you can talk to them for however long you wish. Plus, if you have a webcam you can basically have a long distance meeting over Skype. This is very useful for businesses as it no longer requires people to travel long distances just to have a meeting, they can now do it over Skype and have the exact same outcome. 
• Memos - These are very good as you can send them to numerous amounts of people  which is very good if you want to send small messages to a large amount of people without individually going to them and telling them which saves a lot of time for other things.

2. In my opinion, the best way to communicate with someone and get your ideas through with the best effect is to talk to them in person as you get to know them better and can potentially get a better outcome from speaking to them in person. 

The second best way to communicate with someone is using programs such as Skype as they are more or less exactly the same as talking to someone in person because if you have a webcam and a microphone, you can more or less talk to them like you would face to face because all of the different aspects are there, you can still see their reactions, they can't perfect anything as they have to reply on the spot to what you say, and you get to see their personalities better.

The third best way would then be by telephone or just by VoIP because you can hear their voice, which is much better than just getting a letter/memo or e-mail

The fourth best would be letter/memo/e-mail as you cannot get a full idea of what the person is like and it can potentially take a long time for them to reply to what you have sent them or they might not reply at all.

3. To give constructive feedback you have to be honest to the person while still giving them a certain amount of respect and giving them ideas on how you think they could better the flaws that you have pointed out and giving them reasons on exactly why you thought what you pointed out was flawed/bad. This is required as if you asked them for constructive feedback, you would want the exact same qualities back.

4. To convey specialist ideas to others who are not into that field, i would make a presentation that would be simplified and descriptive which would be appropriate for the audience that i was given judging by their experience in the topic i am presenting.

Created a design crowd logo

I created a logo for someone on design crowd, this is what it looks like:

here is the brief:

i think i met the brief, they wanted a powerful, clean and simple logo and an iconic visual element in the logo and i decided to use a strong text with a red and white theme as these two colours work well in my opinion. I like the emblem, but i have been told that it isn't original in the sense that everyone has the same idea of the word "play" for a game company as that is what immediately strikes you. The brief itself asks for a emblem in the same wavelength as the warner brothers shield which is extremely iconic.

Overall i think the logo is strong and attractive but i don't think i will get the win with this logo, i may consider trying again at the logo emblem and see what i come up with

Unit 01 – Awareness of Employment within the Creative Media Sector

Unit 01 – Awareness of Employment within the Creative Media Sector

• A Full-time job is employment in which the employee works the full number of hours defined as such by his/her employer. Full-time employment often comes with benefits that are not typically offered to part-time, temporary, or flexible workers, such as annual leave, sickleave, andhealth insurance. 
• A Part-time job is a form of employment that carries fewer hours per week than a full-time job. Workers are considered to be part time if they commonly work fewer than 30 or 35 hours per week.  

• A Freelancer is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term. These workers are often represented by a company or an agency that resells their labor and that of others to its clients with or without project management and labor contributed by its regular employees. Others are completely independent.

• Fixed Term Employment is where the employee is taken on for a specific amount of time, unlike a full time employee who works at their job indefinitely until either they want to change or they are asked to leave.

The differences between an employee and a freelancer/contracter is the following: 
For an employee:

• Your employer provides all of the work, the equipment for it and they decide how and when you do the work.
• You will have a written contract which gives you the right to stay as the employee if you keep with the terms and conditions, giving you much more safety than being self employed.
• You are expected to do the work yourself that you are employed to do, and may be moved to different tasks however they see fit.
• You are paid a regular amount according to the hours you work, giving you a permanent wage which again keeps you safe from the dangers of sometimes not being able to get any income as a freelancer for example.

Self-Employed (Freelancer or Contractor)

• You determine how and when you do the work within reason, meaning you can have much more time set out to do what you want such as taking holidays whenever you want, and how many times you want. You can also, if you want a break, just ask family or friends to cover for you.
• You pay your own tax and national insurance contributions on a self-employed basis so you would have to deal with all of that yourself.

I am a full time apprentice and have a set amount of hours i have to work and i get paid for those hours. Being a full time apprentice i am provided with all the necessary tools and equipment that is required for what i am doing. I receive projects that i am required to complete in order to pass my course. 
Some of the benefits of being a self employed worker is you can work your own hours when suitable, but you have a lot of things to keep control of, but you could be rewarded with a lot more, whereas if you are a full time employee working for someone, you have less weight on your shoulders as you basically have the tasks that your occupation requires of you but you only get the set wage that you are entitled to receive but it is a lot safer.

A contract of employment, is an agreement between an employer and an employee which sets out their employment rights, responsibilities and duties.The employment contract is made as soon as you accept a job offer. Having a written contract could cut out disputes with your employer at a later date, and will help you understand your employment rights. You and your employer are bound to the employment contract until it ends, or until the terms are changed. 

Tax and National Insurance as an employee is taken out of your wages automatically, but being self employed you have to deal with this on your own accord.

A good website to find particular jobs in the Creative Media Sector would be http://www.viewcreatives.com/ as it has a large amount of jobs for all around the UK.

Self employed people need certain qualities to be successful in what they do in the CMS. You would need to:

• Have resilience
• Have extensive knowledge of what field you are in
• Be able to think "outside of the box" meaning you should not just take certain decisions lightly and quickly, as that could lead you down the wrong path
• Have passion for what you do.
• Take risks as they could some times pay off if you know what you are doing
• Have a back up plan for pretty much everything that you choose to do.

Things that employers look in employees for the CMS are:

• Good verbal communication skills
• Able to communicate well in groups
• Not be shy and not too demanding
• A nice personality
• Good computer skills necessary for what you are working in
• Willing to learn and take orders from other people
• Honesty

design crowd logo project

Today i have created a logo for a design crowd project, this is what it looks like:

I submitted the logo with 2 days left to go before they choose the final design. 

Here is the brief:

I created a display picture to show what the logo would look like in a bright and dark background, and also shown the abstract raindrop emblem on its own that i created as they wanted there to be a single emblem that sports the company like Apple has. I submitted with the display picture a .PSD file (the raw file that was used that includes all of the layers and effects) and a .EPS file which is make the logo a vector image so that it doesn't lose quality when it is resized.

 I think i met the most of the requirements in the brief as i did everything they asked such as creating a single stand-alone emblem/symbol as well as the actual logo itself. They wanted a clean, crisp and simple logo that is easily recognisable also, which i also think i created. The only part of the brief i think i did not meet is the fact that they wanted a laboratory theme, but the droplet emblem could be considered as a chemical of some sort.

Flyer

I created a flyer for my Seenit website which looks like this:

I am very pleased with the outcome. I created the whole flyer in Adobe Photoshop. I think it stands out very well, and could be used on my website as well as used to be handed out to people. It has a very modern look and isn't too busy.  

Firstly to plan for my flyer, i gathered some information and images from different websites such as TotalFilm, Empire, various news websites such as the guardian etc to get a few examples headlines and pictures of the particular topics. I chose the top 4 that i would want to put on the flyer which will grab the highest amount of attention out of all of them.

Once i was happy with the different articles that i had chosen, i then decided to make the layout for the flyer. I did this using Adobe Photoshop. To get an idea of what i wanted the flyer to look like, i dragged a few guidelines down where i wanted the boxes to be, where i wanted the logos, pictures, social media icons etc then i started to begin filling the guidelines in. 

To make the boxes look more attractive i decided to start using the different effects filters that Photoshop has, such as Stroke, Pattern Overlay, Drop Shadow, Outer Glow etc. Once i was finished with that i then downloaded a brush and went over the boxes with the brush to make the flyer look a bit more attractive to the eye.

After i had finished with the boxes i then started inserting all the images such as the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, IMDb icons, the Seen It logo and the article picture into the appropriate places and used the same effects i used on the black boxes (the white outline and black inwards stroke) to created a feeling of continuity. After i had completed inserting images, i then put the text in and used an informal font that i thought suited the overall look of the flyer.

SeenIt Business Card

i created a business card for my website, this is the final outcome:

I created this business card using Photoshop, i first copied over my Seen It logo and put it into the middle of the image. I wanted to keep the business card as simple as possible so it is not too confusing, so i have just entered the URL for my website, as this is the only main way of advertising my website. To make the URL stand out i created a blue to transparent gradient behind the text and made the actual text white so it contrasts well. Finally, to give a brief indication of what Seen It is, i have put a basic description of what the topic of the website is.

Overall i am happy with the outcome of this business card as it is simple and effective in my opinion and puts across the aim of the website straight away without putting too much in such as brushes, shapes etc which will just confuse the target audience.