London; I love you but your just not my type

If you are new to this blog, you won't understand the pun-age but yeah, I am back front London town, safely been up here for nearly three hours. and I am writing this. As usual, it was time of record buying, feet hurting & over pricing, with a touch of capitalism EVERYWHERE! which to me is worrying. Soho was a gogo (The Members Reference) with life as well as individuality in it's shops but apart from that, the same five shops over and over again (Pret a Manger, Eat, Costa, Sainburys, Tesco).

Anyway got site tracked. the pun in the title relates to typography as I took photos of it everywhere I went some bad some good but mainly just things that interested me. Click to enlarge them and have a peruse. and at the bottom you see David Bowie at Newcastle City Hall in 1978 as part of the exhibition at kings cross.

Successful Meeting

The reason I came down to London was to meet up with Young Minds staff and discuss a project. We as a collaboration are working on a zine. A zine of blog posts about mental health along side statistics and info graphics. and as you can tell by the title, it went well. I met four young people, all who have been effected by Mental health in some way and want to make a difference. I am designing the zine project but all being well my blog post that I wrote for them is being published in said zine! Yay!  Look even Corbyn is happy for me.

There will be updates on this so stay tuned. I have been tasked with a lot of work so hope I don't start stressin'

Down South

As i write this, I am eating pizza and garlic bread and drinking Punk IPA in a Southwark Hotel room. It's defeating me but that's not the point. I am down here to do some work with young minds, designing a zine for them based on their guest blogs about depression and mental health, of which I wrote one. I am here with nibsy, he fancied a weekend in London and who can blame him. It is a big an interesting place.

The meeting is tomorrow and then we are off; to Soho for record shops, The Tate for art and out for food. Fingers crossed it's gonna be fun.

Love you, BYE!!

Thursday Thoughts; My New Favourite Band

Manic Street Preachers are the subject of this weeks post; enjoy;

My new favorite band are Manic Street Preachers. Now this band are not new to me at all. My brother is a massive fan having all their CD albums apart from one and heard them all bar one and that's my favourite one on both accounts. (Futurology)

But the other day, I stuck generation terrorists on and its sublime. It's got the self coined, least Manics sounding song, Loves Sweet Exile.  & then I put on The Holy Bible and that is a staggering record. With my new favorite Manics song on it "Faster". The  poetic use of language, them great riffs and the sound of the album as a whole; its all very dark. Then I was told there is a US mix of the album so I put that on and they sound head banging.


I first learnt about them during there comeback. NME, in 2008, give them the godlike genius award and they had a great album out " Send Away the Tigers".  Then they did the great follow job with "Postcards from a Young Man". So they had been floating around just not properly listened to them and now I have they are awesome. 

I didn't listen to " Rewind the Film" but the latest album "Futurology" is a must listen.

Spreading a message nation wide

I wouldn't normally upload just a presentation board but this is the easiest way to show all of my work. This is a typography based project I did for the Nationwide brief of D&AD. Trying to make banking appeal to young people isn't as easy as it sounds. Saying free Candy with every penny you put in to as savings account isn't the answer. So what do young people do? They are still learning so when they make mistakes, they try and justify it. So that's what this campaign is about.

"You can make excuses for your buying but don't make them with your banking" is my slogan so banking with Nationwide isn't a mistake, you don't need to make an excuse for doing that.

My problem with doing briefs like this, is that for the cost of £0 and 0 pence, a big company gets a free advertising campaign from those clawing to get into the industry. Big Companies do tend to only go for big design companies to do their work so it is nice that smaller people / especially students getting there ideas heard. But it doesn't stop goo work being done.

Back to Basics? Who are they?

Obscure northern indie bands aren't hard to come by, But obscure northern indie bands that played a few gigs and did radio interviews are hard to come by. I bet not many people did that. Obscure northern indie bands that feature played a few gigs and did radio interviews are hard to come by and feature James Reay and Phillip Reay lead you to one band. Back to Basics were (are?) an indie punk band from the north east of England and they had three albums, one EP, a few live albums and one vinyl single all before fading into folklore. They did play the O2 academy 2; Bruce Foxton once stood on that stage.

The designer was the drummer and he is me. The bands design was a bit rubbish, or of it's time so I have been trying to salvage it a little bit by doing a selection of posters based on some of the bands output. I have done six. of which you can see the six now. I will be doing more as I want a full set so I can put them up on my wall. I loved being in that band. I nearly killed my brother during the second album but it was great fun. I must of been a pain to work with too. He nearly killed me. Several rehearsals, we couldn't play or if we did it was for twenty mins.

Here is a link to the music; https://soundcloud.com/back-to-basics

 or if you wanna play some now. see the song below;

Thursday Thoughts; The Left Will Rise Again

 It's that time of the week again, ladies and gentlemen, it's;

So the left is out in force or has been as it were. It seems there's a mandate for change. Us in the UK, it is the person of 2015 Jeremy Corbyn and in the US of A it is presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. And I have never been so happy with politics. It brings me great pleasure to see men with the "right views" been given the chance to consider power.

I remember the first time I heard Jeremy Corbyn's name is was on the world tonight (the radio 4 news program) and pretty much the day before voting was closed within the party for leader. The final people who voted for this man were hoping, by voting for him, they'd widen the debate for the next leader. But little did they know they'd voted for a man with strong personal principles and a man of pure honesty.  The rest of the candidates just looked like face representing a face. Burnham looked like Blair lite and the women (no offense) were not strong enough to convince people.  Hence lack of selection; there were ideas of shy Cooper voters but they didn't materialise.  So now we have a really new and exciting politics again and all of this from an aging man. Why has it taken a man of age to revolutionise the left. If so many young people opposed the Tories why didn't they rise up not as a protest but as a party. It's democracy after all.

Now across the pond to the US of A, where elections are run on such massive scales, they will make us fall over and the election campaign takes over a year in length and where, the young, I think couldn't give two monkeys.  This is where "celebrity" endorsements come in. On the left we have the person who I want to get runner up for Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, she seems quite on the ball in terms of policy but the thing to get young people to vote for her; Katy Perry, she is friends with the queen of stadium pop. I mean Obama is also friends with rap super power Jay Z. Now the man I would vote for if I could but I can't is Bernie Sanders. He is on point (as my friend would say) with policy. He knows what he wants and he is another aging example of someone rocking the political boat, as it were. His celeb is more than just an  endorsement as much a fully fledged promotion tool. Killer Mike from Run the Jewels invited the senator out to his Atlanta barber shop to get an interview, the hour long interview covers all key policies in the most open and honest debate I have seen in politics. There's no curtain, to hide behind & no façade. open & honest debate, that's what the public want. And if the The Jam got it right "the public gets what the public wants" fingers crossed we'll see.

a Gif to you

A suggestion from a fellow designer thought that a gif might be a good way to get the message of how awesome James Reay Design is. To maybe attach it to emails and enhance social media presence and he was right. On social media, it has 7 Likes. This is more than most of my stand alone pieces. But in the future when I pester companies if they want me as an intern or just want me to design stuff for them. It is just a quick and immediate way for people to say my work So thank you Mr Walden. 

ISTD; Gig Review Plus

I was never at the Lesser Free trade hall in 1976 to witness the Sex Pistols change Manchester music for many reasons.

1. I wasn't alive.

the most compelling reason but I would love to of. For this project; I had to research a first person account of a major event and this Peter Hook was a career altering decision. I had to research it and then put it's motivations an it's energy into an exhibition space. The first time, I did it; I felt like I got a rubbish grade. But since redoing it; I am happy with it but don't know it's grade as of yet so I wait patiently. This version compared to the one I am not showing you is more extreme.

The editorial lacked any dimension to it. It was black and white like a typical punk fanzine but when the exhibition is glaring with pink and yellow and a black and white sellable item is a clash to say the least. The content is the same as before, just with the a little tweak in layout and with new colour patches. I have only used black and white for selcted spreads where they are relevant like most good designers do;

I have done the same with the exhibition space; tweaked layout, removed a bit more text and increased image size. There is now text and projections on the floor which weren't there before. The hand type has always been there but has been given a remix. This is meant to be a type project and I have only really used one typeface which seems weird and I am using it in such an unconventional. It also seems odd that most of my type is image.

Thursday Thoughts; Rain

Just a little bit of house keeping; Sorry I haven't posted in a while uni has taken over for...up until Monday but I have a few thoughts I would like to share in the newly revised Wednesday Write Down. I even have a logo for it that I am making as I type this. Hope you like it... the writing not the logo.

 It is said that you go to heaven for the weather and hell for the company so please let heaven swing by for at least a few months. Living in the north of over Christmas all I have seen is grey and not a nice one; Grey like a weak cement mix. Is a bit of sun too much to task for.

Oh and the rain please no more of the wet stuff. I wasn't personally effected by the floods but it postponed my uni teachings and damaged my friends houses. And my favourite route into uni has been blocked by a bridge being damaged.

But everything seems to be back to normal now.

Goodbye Bowie

I didn't want to believe it. but it's true. One of the best musicians all time is longer walking among us. I have dedicated so much ear time to the man, I felt a connection between me and him. When you listen to Heroes; you believe you can be a hero. When you listen to Starman; you feel like other worldly. For a man who never wanted to be a singer; he sung all his life. Whatever period of Bowie you fell in love with he was a part of your life. If you don't like him; you will like something he has inspired. If you don't like anything about him; you can appreciate how influential he was.

Remember him with the gift, he gave us, his music.