Maurice Kinn’s 1952 purchase and an IPC title from 1963.

NME stands for New Musical Express, a London music weekly whose opening issue is dated 7 March 1952, according to Wikipedia. It did not start from nothing. Wikipedia says the London music promoter Maurice Kinn bought the Accordion Times and Musical Express fifteen minutes before it was due to close, and relaunched it as the New Musical Express, printed in a tabloid format on standard newsprint. The Guardian’s obituary of Kinn, written by Chris Hutchins and published on 10 August 2000, tells the same story from the publisher’s side: Kinn bought the paper in 1952, fifteen minutes before it was to go bust, having worked as a band manager and then as a concert promoter.

The obituary describes a publisher who stayed close to the performers his paper covered. It says Kinn won the respect of American stars including Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, and the gratitude of British groups starting out in the early 1960s, among them the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Kinn also wrote the paper’s gossip column, Tailpieces, under the pseudonym Alley Cat, and the film director Michael Winner and the songwriter Don Black began their careers under his direction at the paper, the obituary says. The Guardian reported in 2018 that the opening front cover featured the Goons, Big Bill Broonzy and Ted Heath.

Under its early editor Ray Sonin, Wikipedia says, the paper published artist interviews and industry gossip, and from 14 November 1952 it printed a weekly singles chart that it compiled itself from sales in record shops around the UK.

Ownership passed to a large publishing group in 1963. The obituary says Kinn sold the paper to the International Publishing Corporation eleven years after he bought it, and stayed on to run it for IPC for a further decade. Wikipedia’s history of that publisher, later known as TI Media, lists its names as International Publishing Company from 1963, IPC Magazines from 1968, IPC Media from 1998 and Time Inc. UK from 2014, before it became TI Media in 2018. Wikipedia says that in early 1972 the paper faced closure by IPC, and that editor Alan Smith and his assistant editor Nick Logan recruited writers from the underground press, including Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent. Logan took over the editor’s chair in 1973, and the paper went on to cover glam rock and then punk, with writers such as Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, Wikipedia says.

A Barney Bubbles masthead, a glossy cover and a final weekly.

The masthead logo goes back to the late 1970s. Wikipedia says that when Neil Spencer succeeded Logan as editor in 1978, one of his early tasks was to oversee a redesign of the paper by the graphic designer Barney Bubbles, which included the logo still used on the masthead in a modified form; it appeared towards the end of that year. Wikipedia also says the paper moved gradually toward a magazine format through the 1980s and 1990s, changing from newsprint in 1998, and Press Gazette, writing in July 2023, likewise dated its move from newsprint to magazine paper to 1998.

The cover changed again in 2002. The Guardian, in a report by Claire Cozens on 5 April 2002, said the New Musical Express would drop its hallmark “dirty newsprint” cover for a glossy one, keep newsprint on the inside pages and relaunch in a smaller format so that it could sit alongside other music titles on magazine shelves. The relaunch, set for 17 April 2002 to coincide with the paper’s fiftieth anniversary, brought more pages, the glossy cover and a redesigned logo. Neil Robinson, the title’s publishing and online director, told the paper the smaller size would improve its display position in newsagents. The publisher was still IPC.

The website arrived before the glossy. Wikipedia says NME.com launched in 1996. From 18 September 2015 the magazine was given away free, distributed nationwide through universities, shops and the transport network, Wikipedia says.

The weekly print edition ended in 2018. The Guardian reported on 7 March 2018 that the title would stop printing after 66 years and continue online, where a weekly digital feature called the Big Read would replace the cover-star interview, while special print issues such as the NME Gold series would keep a sporadic presence on paper. The publisher at the time was Time Inc UK, which The Guardian noted had been sold to the private equity group Epiris a week earlier. In the same report the publisher said its effort and investment would now focus on the digital space.

A three-letter name that outlived its weekly paper.

A music magazine masthead has to work while something else takes the attention. On most covers the photograph is the reason a reader stops, so the title sits at the top of the page and is often partly hidden by a head, a shoulder or a raised guitar. Designers plan for that: a masthead with heavy, wide letters can lose a corner and still be read, and art directors learn which parts of the word can be covered and which must stay clear. Around the photograph sit the cover lines, short phrases in a few sizes that name the acts inside and give the issue a voice. The type for those lines usually changes from issue to issue, while the masthead stays fixed and becomes the one element a reader can recognise from across a shop.

Formats have tested that fixed element. A weekly printed on newsprint was read quickly and thrown away, so its title had to be loud on rough paper with limited colour. A glossy monthly allowed finer printing, larger photography and more room around the name. Websites then asked the same word to work as a small header, a social media avatar and an app icon, where it may shrink to a square a few millimetres wide. Some titles answer by cutting the masthead to an initial or a short form with its punctuation; others keep the full word and simplify its weight. Digital covers keep the photograph in charge, with the masthead placed over an image that may be cropped differently on every screen.

A Singapore music group and a print return in 2023.

The title left its long-time publisher in 2019. Press Gazette reported on 17 May 2019 that TI Media had sold NME and its sister title Uncut to BandLab Technologies, a group of music businesses headquartered in Singapore and built around the BandLab music-making platform, with the deal due to complete by the end of that month. All of the two titles’ social, digital and print assets were included. The report noted that BandLab had bought The Guitar Magazine and MusicTech from Anthem Publishing the previous October, and quoted its founder and chief executive, Meng Kuok, welcoming both brands. Wikipedia says that in December 2021 BandLab Technologies was reorganised as Caldecott Music Group, with its music publications grouped under the NME Networks name, and that Uncut was sold on to Kelsey Media in 2023.

Print returned in 2023 in a different form. Press Gazette reported on 20 July 2023 that NME would publish a glossy magazine every two months in limited runs after five years as a digital-only title. Holly Bishop, chief operating and commercial officer of NME Networks, told the paper that the company had been inspired by the return of vinyl and cassettes, that the magazine would be much thicker than earlier formats and take its cues from monthly titles, and that each run would be kept deliberately small, borrowing the idea of limited “drops” from fashion and sneakers. She described it as a marketing investment for the brand rather than a profit driver. Copies were to be sold through Dawsons, a music retailer owned by Caldecott, and through artists and record shops. The print edition grew out of The Cover, a weekly digital feature launched in May 2023 that presents an emerging artist using the visual of a traditional magazine cover, and Bishop said that approach would carry into print. Wikipedia says the relaunch began with a July/August issue featuring the singer d4vd.

The Guardian’s 2018 report spelled out that the initials stand for New Musical Express. Wikipedia now describes NME as a British music, film, gaming and culture website and bimonthly magazine, published by NME Networks.

For a design guide, NME shows how a masthead redrawn in 1978 and again in 2002 can carry a title from tabloid newsprint to a website and back to a limited-run glossy. Compare The Face, a London magazine with a masthead dating from 1980, and Uncut, the monthly sold alongside NME in 2019. For this guide we use masthead red, newsprint and ink black with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep NME’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.