 His best-known work is "Magazine Design", published in 1969.McLean was of the opinion that the design and layout of magazines was of crucial importance and significance in the pre-television era, and this work became known as a practitioner’s manual for those in the profession.He wrote the Thames & Hudson "Manual of Typography", published in 1980, which drew on his unusually wide experience of the subject, as did his historical survey "How Typography Happens", published by the British Library in 2000.