Popped in for a chat with the Readers' editor, Ian Mayes (seen above) , to check on reactions to the redesign so far. You can just see the City office in conclave beyond the blinded windows. All opinions are of course based on the preview edition. They are mostly warmly in favour apart from some beefs about losing regular columns such as Smallweed.
The two major reservations are the dropping of Life in favour of a daily Science page in the main paper and especially the loss of the David Hillman masthead on the front. It's like losing a "classic icon" said one.
Ian himself has no doubt. He thinks it would have been disastrous not to have got a new masthead however good the old one. It would have been like doing the long jump and hesitating at the launch pad, he said.
Ian recalled a similar situation with the last redesign in 1988 when the editor, Peter Preston ruled that if you are going to have to do a root and branch redesign, then that's what you have to do.
