Depression Crushed me & I don't want it to Crush others

I am not one for pride, I have to go over and beyond to even be remotely proud of my work but this did. I have been working closely with Young Minds (the mental health charity) to produce a zine of people's experiences of Mental Illnesses along with some help if you do start to suffer at university (as many of you know; I have).

It launched yesterday via the Young Minds Website as a downloadable pdf which is available here. and here is my favourite part of this story; The guardian shared a link to it on an article about Mental Health; which can be read here. Me a liberal leftie (aren't these the same thing?) has had something he made shared on the Guardian website. I am sure there will be bigger achievements ahead but this  and

• Having my name in NME before it came rubbish.
• Performing a song I have written at an O2 academy (2).
• Having Courtney Barnett reply to an email I sent her.
• Completing Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry & Ratchet and Clank.

 I am doing well. Below I have embedded the zine for your viewing pleasure. Read it! Promote it! Share it! Print it! Just spread the word about mental health.

I did my bit yesterday morning. I needed to speak for two minutes in front of my class about me so I spoke about my Mental Health. I hate speaking in front of people but it went well. It did get a little preachy but It's just who I am it has shaped what I am, what's the point in not mentioning it. Depression crushed me and now i don't want it to crush others. It got a massive round of applause with various well done comments and even a peck on cheek. Thank you class if you listening, Thank you YoungMinds and who ever is reading this.

I've got my spine, I've got my Band Crush

This is the final NME internship related post I will post. This is the first thing that I was asked to do when I got there. It was to design a logo for a Radar feature; Radar being the NME's new up and coming band section and the feature was to show what artist, another artist and/or band they had a crush on. It was to be named "Band Crush". 

It only made sense for it to be a typographic solution, using heart image would just look cliche. So I started off safe and then went on a tangent of madness. Which I was actively encouraged by Mr Tony Ennis, My mentor for the first week at NME. So that's why some of them are not usable in the slightest. 

PS The one below on the bottom right, is essentially just the Just Eat Logo.

New Look is the NME Part 2

 In part one, I addressed the my humble opinion on the "new" NME. and one other thing I will like to add;

The is what #NME used to be the #NewMusicalExpress featuring the legend #JohnPeel

A photo posted by James Alexander Reay (@jamuggins) on Oct 8, 2015 at 12:22am PDT

Anyway now I am going to get to the point. (yep it only took a post and a half). In the latter half of my time at NME, I had a look at taking the NME look / redesign NME into my own hands. I was told by one of the other interns that they look cool. I rotated the logo because the new magazine doesn't have to fight for shelf space. I made a bar out of this vertical logo to add all of the features too.

I had a limited typeface choice at NME so landed on Tahoma as the most suitably different typeface to sharp sans (the key font of the old design). I took the effort to make all the features relevant to the time, the redesign would come out and that was a few weeks ago here are the first four issues...give em a click to check them out etc etc etc

New Look is the NME Part 1

NME, New Musical express, the magazine responsible for my late 00's music obsession. I lived breathed the word of it because it was gospel. I am sure that is blasphemy and as of writing this is a Sunday so oops. Anyway it was all good and the the 10's came along and the awesomeness dropped a little bit although it did have a good start with a beautiful redesign and one of my favourite photos.

The next redesign was nice but was not what I was used to so felt to different to get attached and the content felt so watered down to you could take a bath in it. and now it looks mega modern (rather attractive) but instead of just watered down journalism and opinion it is filled with adverts. Worse than that it has "celebrities" in it's pages. Alt journalism meant you had an obscure indie band on the front. (see above or just google NME and you will see what I mean.) I understand some decisions had to be made to make the free version viable but this...

...is not NME. Just because it says it is doesn't mean it is. The spirit is dead. The ideals are long gone. "Indie" is dead, long live independent music.