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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Stephen Bates and Ian Mayes

Michael McNay obituary

Journalist Michael (Mike) McNay, East Malling, Kent, 29 October 1980. Scanned from GNM Archive print
Michael McNay in 1980; he was ‘the most vociferous and talented, even belligerent, advocate of newspaper design’. Photograph: Sue Adler/The Observer

Michael McNay, who has died aged 91, may not have been an immediately recognisable name to many Guardian readers, but he more than anyone else shaped the modern appearance of the paper.

During a 37-year career he covered many areas of the paper as a subeditor, but also as a writer mainly on arts subjects and as the Guardian’s design editor at the time of its radical remodelling in 1988.

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