Bradbury Thompson

Graphic Designer: Bradbury Thompson

By K. Lee Goodrick

Patrick Kirk

ARTD 201

Due: March 28, 2007

Bradbury Thompson (1911 Ð'- 1995) is often times called the "father of modern design" and considered a pioneer among graphic designers (Father). As early as high school, Bradbury showed a keen talent in the field of graphic design. He jumpstarted his career when working in New York; and from that point he undertook many projects that made him famous. Among those projects includes designing stamps for the postal office, redesigning World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago Daily News, and even the Holy Bible. His work was not overlooked and Bradbury received several awards for his works. Bradbury Thompson has left a very positive and successful mark as being one the most talented graphic designers of the past century.

Bradbury Thompson was born in the year 1911 in Topeka Kansas. He attended and graduated from Topeka High School. Even in high school, Bradbury was very active and a over achiever. He was the president of his senior class; captain of the track team; and editor of two Kaw yearbooks. After High School, Bradbury went to Washburn College where he studied economics. Bradbury graduated from Washburn College in 1934 with his bachelor's degree.

As early as 1938, just a few years after college, Bradbury left Kansas to work at Rogers'Kellog and Stillson in New York City, New York. While in New York he started to design the graphic arts publication Westvaco Inspirations. Westvaco Inspirations is a publication produced by the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company to promote paper sales. Bradbury became well know for his design of over sixty successful covers that caught the eye of many newsstand browsers. Bradbury's work at Westvaco Inspirations company prepared him for one of his most famous pieces of work; the Alphabet 26 (Hoffman).

Alphabet 26 was a project to improve our current alphabet system by simplifying the letters. He gave the letters a color code based on the difference between the capital version and the lowercase version. To further explain; the adapted alphabet system contains 19 letters that have different symbols to distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. The other seven letters, (c,o,s,v,w,x,y) that have the same uppercase and lowercase letters, are coded by the color Cyan. The idea was to take the 19 letters and change them so the uppercase and lowercase letters were the same. The black letters represent the letters that would change the lowercase letterform to look like a small version of the capital letterform. The pink colors represent those letters where the uppercase version of the letter would be changed to look like a bigger version of the lower case. The idea is well known and truly a good idea but was never implemented (Father).

1945 was one of Bradbury's most successful years. In 1945 he designed the final issues of three wartime magazines. Also in that same year, Bradbury became the art director at Mademoiselle where he continued to work for fifteen years. Another position he acquired that year was a position of the design director for Art News and Art News Annual. He held that position for another 27 years. With such a busy year he was not done; he also created a brochure for the Ford Motor Company.

Another thing that Bradbury is so famous for is his work on the US stamps. Bradbury tackled the project and created over 90 different stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. The criteria of his stamps were to represent a type of national unity.

At the peek of Bradbury's career he was asked to redesign the World Book Encyclopedia and the Chicago Daily News. Immediately after this project he was asked to design a new Holy Bible by the Field Enterprises publishing organization. This was no easy task for Bradbury. The next few