My media product was a music magazine of the hardcore and pop punk genres combined. The general genre of the magazine I was producing, along with its specific genres that have many similarities, helped to determine the general appearance I designed for my magazine. In some ways I wanted to follow the general conventions and commonalities in design of other music magazines on the market, but my main aim was to challenge these conventions as much as possible due to the fact that there are currently no music magazines on the market that are similar to mine; my music magazine will be the only magazine on sale in the UK that focuses on the hardcore and pop-punk genres specifically, and this gives me the opportunity and motivation to think outside the box and explore new ideas and be creative in terms of my music magazine’s design and style.

I chose to have simply one main central image of one band on the front cover of my magazine, which follows the conventions of many other music magazines on the market such as NME and Rock Sound. I also chose to follow the conventions of the genres of music that I chose to cover by choosing a “Varsity” style font for my main title and main subheadings, as this font is very commonly used across album artwork, merchandise and tour posters for those two particular music genres, so the design of my front cover was very coherent of this general theme, although, due to the fact this kind of genre and its associated themes, fonts and styles are not commonly seen on the market, this is also effectively challenging conventions of music magazines generally. I endeavoured to ensure that my audience are able to see an evident and clear comparison between my product and other products associated with those music genres.

One way in which I challenged the conventions of magazine design was my colour scheme; after much deliberation and alteration, I decided upon a general colour scheme of black, white, green and orange. I feel that these colours fit in well with both the genres that my magazine covers, with bright and cheerful colours to represent pop-punk and darker/monochrome colours to represent the more serious and aggressive hardcore genres. I also chose to combine these colours as I feel they represented a sense of diversity, and sent out the message that there is something for everyone within the hardcore and pop-punk genres, and also that the fanbase across both genres is a very eclectic mix.However as there are currently no other magazines on the market that cover these genres, there are also no magazines that follow a colour scheme similar to this. Most music magazines generally tend to follow a colour scheme that includes red, white, black and a few others, but very rarely do they include oranges and greens together as I have done for my product. I feel that this challenge of convention and great contrast between my magazine and other music magazines will make my product stand out over the rest and appear more interesting. Consumers become very bored very easily and quickly and are constantly trying to find new products and new ideas to keep them satisfied, so a brand new music magazine of newly covered genres with a completely new and different look in comparison to others is sure to attract many potential readers.