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ABOUT

Bradbury Thompson

Born in Topeka, KS, 1911-1995. Head of Mademoiselle magazine, and a general master of design. He served on the faculty of the Yale School of Art for over thirty years. Typographically, he is best known for his proposal, published in Westvaco Inspirations 180 in 1950, to have a unicase alphabet, tentatively called Alphabet 26. We cite from that page: Alphabet 26 is Bradbury Thompson's radical proposal for the redesign of the alphabet. We present excerpts from an essay that he wrote to accompany a printed piece that he planned to have published at the beginning of 1996. Brad Thompson died before its completion. Much of the material here first appeared in Thompson's The Art of Graphic Design (Yale, 1988). The text has been edited for presentation here. Paul Baker, with feedback from Thompson, has produced the new digital version of Alphabet 26 which is used in this presentation. Note: Paul Baker's version uses Baskerville for the mix. Paul Baker's grandmother and Thompson's mother were sisters. Here is a quote from the inside flap of The Art of Graphic Design, slightly repetitive: The art director of Mademoiselle and design director of Art News and Art News Annual in the decades after World War II, he also designed the formats for some three dozen other magazines, including Smithsonian. Thompson is in addition a distinguished designer of limited edition books, postage stamps, rationalized alphabets, corporate identification programs, trademarks, and sacred works (most notable, the Washburn College Bible, in which the words are set in the cadence of speech). His hallmark has ever been the adaptation of classic typography to the modern world. Thompson is perhaps most well known as the designer of more than sixty issues of Westvaco Inspirations, a magazine published by the Westvaco Corporation.... Bradbury Thompson has served on the faculty of the Yale School of Art for over thirty years.... His profession has honored him with all of its highest awards, including those of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the National Society of Art Directors, the Art Directors Club, the Type Directors Club, [now the American Center for Design], and the Society of Publication Designers. Digital versions based on his ideas have been made by Manfred Klein (see his KLBradbury family, 2007). Biography. Picture.

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Bradbury Thompson
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INTERNAL LINKS
History of type ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Unicase type design ⦿ Type scene in Kansas ⦿ Baskerville ⦿