Michael McNay, the Guardian design editor who more than anyone else shaped the modern appearance of the paper, has died aged 91. During a 37-year career he worked as a subeditor, writer on arts subjects, and design editor at the time of the paper's radical remodelling in 1988.
Radical 1988 redesign
The innovative design encompassed the presentation of articles, headlines, spaces, expanded use of photographs, new typefaces, and even a new masthead. It hurtled the paper into an era decisively removed from its cramped, dowdy and often amateurish past, cloudy pictures, and reputation for hilarious spelling errors.
The twin impetuses were the sidelining of print unions after Rupert Murdoch's move to Wapping and the initial success of the Independent. The Guardian's redesign was radical and challenging to other broadsheets, which gradually followed suit. McNay had many of the original ideas, argued for them against internal opposition, and mastered the new Atex computer system. According to the Guardian's history Witness in a Time of Turmoil (2025), he was 'the most vociferous and talented, even belligerent, advocate of newspaper design'.
Passionate advocate
McNay, a substantial presence and keen rugby supporter who played hooker for London Scottish, could be passionate in arguing his corner. Linda Christmas, who worked in the features department in the 1970s, recalled he was 'the only journalist I know outside of movies who, in a heated moment, threw a telephone across the room', adding he was well informed, funny and damned good company.
During the Sarah Tisdall crisis in 1983, when a fax detailing Ministry of Defence plans was sent anonymously to the Guardian, the court ordered the paper to hand it over. McNay tried to seize the fax from editor Peter Preston's hands to destroy it and take the rap himself. The paper complied, Tisdall was identified and jailed.
Early life and career
McNay was born in Rawalpindi, now Pakistan, the youngest of three sons of army staff sergeant Harold McNay and Eleanora Yanischek, born in London to refugees from Silesia. He survived a severe case of typhoid as a child and came to Britain at age 12 after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. He was educated at Darlington grammar school in Co Durham, did national service in the Royal Corps of Signals, and won a place at Balliol College, Oxford, to study English, but left after a year for failing the preliminary examination in medieval English.
After jobs including temporary work for a tailors' firm in Jermyn Street, he became a trainee reporter on the Oxford Mail and Bedford Times. He joined the Guardian as a subeditor in its Manchester office in 1963. In a memoir he gave to the paper's archive in 2001, he wrote: 'It was a gently civilised life in which the major effort was to stay awake. You arrived in the evening to find a fresh pot of glue on your desk alongside a pair of scissors and a neat pile of copy paper with a clean, freshly ironed towel and a piece of soap in the top drawer.'
Move to design
Moving to the features department in Manchester, McNay became fascinated with page design and was given more leeway, especially after Peter Preston became features editor, determined to make pages more coordinated when the department moved to London.
He became arts editor, writing vigorously about art and cinema, and later producing artists' obituaries. His obituary of Patrick Heron led to a book for Tate's St Ives series (2002). Other books include Artists and Their Studios (2008), Hidden Treasures of England (2009) and Hidden Treasures of London (2015). In 2003 he was a founder member of the Hazlitt Society.
Leading the redesign
By the mid-1980s the Guardian needed a redesign, and McNay, as the most vociferous internal critic of the paper's limitations, was placed in charge. He enlisted graphic designer David Hillman, who had worked on the Sunday Times, and gave him a broad brief: 'We regard ourselves as basically a text paper but with decided ambitions to use pictures better … We decidedly don't want a deja-vu appearance … We want to look modern.' Preston agreed to the investment after seeing the original design.
McNay trained on the new Atex system, using it more easily than most, and trained subeditors, rigorously patrolling the redesign. Pages were more boldly laid out, pictures given more space, articles less squeezed. The front page would have only one or two stories instead of the previous 10 or 12. Not all subs were happy, and McNay became known as the thought police. By his retirement in 2000 the paper's appearance had changed for ever.
He concluded his memoir: 'The Guardian must always be about its writers, but I made my career in production on a gut instinct that, whether or not I could make it as a writer, helping to shape the paper physically would be a necessary and deeply satisfying job of work. Every time I see the paper now, I look at it with pride.'
Personal life
In 1957 he married Marian Milne, with whom he had two children, Lois and Ross. After divorce, in 1974 he married Sue Pilkington, a subeditor, and they had a daughter, Anna, who died last year. He leaves his children and five grandchildren, Morgan, Maisie, Freddie, Solly and Isla.
Ian Mayes writes: Mike McNay radiated creative energy. His great achievement was the 1988 redesign, using a unique combination of Helvetica bold and Garamond italic. It was widely copied. Mike persuaded Peter Preston to include the sacred masthead in the redesign. Mike took Preston to David Hillman's studio, where he resisted the suggestion to go tabloid: it was too soon. At Preston's bidding they went back to the Guardian on the bus. They were a closely bonded pair, with mutual respect. Preston entrusted the welfare of the whole paper to Mike. There was opposition even in Preston's editorial bunker. Mike prevailed.
