Michael McNay, who has died aged 91, shaped the modern look of the Guardian more than anyone else 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.
Early life and career
McNay was born in Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan, the youngest of three sons of an army staff sergeant and western front veteran, Harold McNay, and his wife Eleanora Yanischek, born in London to refugees from Silesia. He survived a severe case of typhoid as a child and went to Britain at 12 after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Educated at Darlington grammar school in Co Durham, he 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 a series of jobs, including temporary work for a tailors' firm in Jermyn Street, he became a trainee reporter on the Oxford Mail and then the Bedford Times. He joined the Guardian as a subeditor in its Manchester office in 1963.
The 1988 redesign
By the mid-1980s it was clear 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 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.' Editor Peter Preston agreed to the investment on seeing the original design.
The innovative design – encompassing presentation of articles, headlines, spaces, expanded use of photographs, new typefaces, even a new masthead – hurtled the paper into a modern era. McNay trained to use the new Atex computer system and rigorously patrolled the redesign. The front page would have only one or two stories instead of the previous 10 or 12. 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'.
Linda Christmas, who worked in features in the 1970s, said he was 'the only journalist I know outside of movies who, in a heated moment, threw a telephone across the room', though she added he was well informed, funny and good company.
During the Sarah Tisdall crisis in 1983, McNay tried to seize a fax from editor Peter Preston's hands to destroy it and take the rap himself, but the paper complied with the court order and Tisdall went to jail.
Personal life and legacy
McNay married Marian Milne in 1957; they had two children, Lois and Ross. After divorce, he married Sue Pilkington in 1974; they had a daughter, Anna, who died last year. He leaves his children and five grandchildren.
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.' He persuaded Preston to include the masthead in the redesign. By the time McNay retired in 2000, the paper's appearance had been changed forever.
McNay 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.'
