American graphic designer
Bradbury Thompson
|
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Thompson circa 1983
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Born
| (
1911-03-25
)
March 25, 1911
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Died
| November 1, 1995
(1995-11-01)
(aged 84)
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Occupation
| Graphic designer
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J. Bradbury Thompson
(March 25, 1911 ? November 1, 1995) was an American graphic designer and art director known for his work designing magazines and postage stamps.
Early life and education
[
edit
]
J. Bradbury Thompson was born on March 25, 1911, in
Topeka, Kansas
, and attended
Topeka High School
. He attended
Washburn College
, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Fraternity, the yearbook editor and designer. He graduated in 1934 with a degree in economics and a minor in art.
[1]
[2]
[3]
A facility called the Bradbury Thompson Alumni Center now stands at Washburn. In 1938, Thompson designed the college's mascot,
The Ichabod
.
[4]
Career
[
edit
]
In 1938, he moved to New York City and designed the catalog for the
1939 World's Fair
. During World War II, he worked in the publication's division of the
Office of War Information
(OWI) designing magazines including
U.S.A.
, a magazine aimed at Americans and allies.
[2]
[5]
Later in 1938, Thompson began working with the arts journal of
West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company
,
Westvaco Inspirations for Printers.
The booklet was meant to showcase the company's papers and Thompson began experimenting with typography, photographic reproduction and color, drawing inspiration from printing elements and borrowing plates and separations from museums, magazines, and advertising agencies. These borrowed elements blended modern and traditional elements to become a leading
avant-garde
publication with a distribution of 35,000. By 1962, he had designed 61 issues.
[2]
[3]
Thompson was art director of
Mademoiselle
magazine for fifteen years beginning in 1945. In c. 1948, Thompson designed the book
Painting toward architecture
for the
Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art
, which accompanied their multi-year art and architecture exhibition, also by this name, in over 25 venues across the United States.
[6]
In total, Thompson designed 35 magazines, including
Business Week
, the
Harvard Business Review
, and
Smithsonian
magazine
.
[2]
In 1969, he worked for the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee as the design coordinator and designed more than 120 United States postage stamps in a wide range of subjects himself. He worked in this role until 1978, influencing the design of stamps.
[2]
A signature design from Thompson was his redesign of the
King James Bible
into the
Washburn College Bible
in 1979. The 1800-page three-volume Bible was a limited-edition with only 398 copies, taking 10 years to make. Thompson wanted the text to be more accessible and used the typeface
Sabon
set at 14-point in flush-left, ragged-right columns which allowed Thompson to break the text like a spoken cadence. This book was one of the first to use the typeface, designed by
Jan Tschichold
and released in 1967. His
typographic alignment
of the text broke the standard of flushed columns that the Gutenberg Bible set.
[3]
[7]
Thompson served on the faculty of
Yale University
from 1956 to 1995.
[2]
He received the
AIGA
Gold Medal in 1975. He was inducted into the
Art Directors Club Hall of Fame
in 1977 and received the
Type Director's Club Medal
in 1986.
[3]
[8]
[9]
In 1988, his autobiography, "The Art of Graphic Design," was published by
Yale University Press
. It won the North America's George Wittenborn Memorial Award as best art book of the year from the
Art Libraries Society
.
[2]
Alphabet 26
[
edit
]
In 1950, Thompson developed a font called Alphabet 26 or a "monoalphabet," an alphabet whose uppercase and lowercase forms of each letter were identical, and case was expressed through letter size only. (In the conventional Latin alphabet, it is already so for letters like "o" and "O" or "s" and "S" but not for a/A, r/R, etc. His monoalphabet was a transitional serif (modelled after
Baskerville
) with lowercase a, e, m, and n mixed with uppercase B, D, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, P, Q, R, T, U, and Y. (The forms of C/c, O/o, S/s, V/v, W/w, X/x and Z/z are essentially the same in uppercase and lowercase letters to begin with.) The simplification was intended to make the letters of the alphabet more logical and intuitive, making the alphabet easier to learn and use.
[10]
Thompson first published the alphabet in a
Westvaco Inspirations for Printers
.
[11]
The set of letters for Alphabet 26 is:
a B c D e F G H I J K L m n o P Q R s T U v w x Y z
The above example uses the
CSS
rule
font-variant-caps: unicase
, which is not supported by many browsers as of July 2017. A closer approximation that works in most current browsers (but suffers from slight variations in weight & height) is the following:
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m n o
p
q
r
s
t
u
v w x
y
z
Example:
B
RaDBURY
T
HomPson DesIGneD aLPHaBeT 26.
(Alternate approximation:
B
r
a
d
b
u
r
y
T
h
om
p
son
d
es
i
g
ne
d
a
l
p
h
a
b
e
t
26
.)
Harold Lohner's
Mean 26
font uses Alphabet 26.
[12]
Death and legacy
[
edit
]
Thompson died on November 1, 1995, in
Greenwich
,
Connecticut
.
[2]
His papers are housed at the
University of Illinois at Chicago
.
[13]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Bradbury Thompson Alumni Center - About the center
Archived
June 1, 2007, at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Gelder, Lawrence Van (1995-11-04).
"J. Bradbury Thompson Dies; Designer and Art Director, 84"
.
The New York Times
.
ISSN
0362-4331
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"AIGA Medalists"
.
AIGA | the professional association for design
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
- ^
"Bradbury Thompson - Kansapedia - Kansas Historical Society"
.
www.kshs.org
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
- ^
Heller, Steven (2010-01-25).
"Bradbury Thompson's USA"
.
Print Magazine
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
- ^
Housley, Kathleen L. (2001).
Emily Hall Tremaine: Collector on the Cusp
, (p. 98). Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation: Meriden, CT.
- ^
Thompson, Bradbury (1980).
Holy Bible
. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
0-19-502786-8
.
- ^
"Bradbury Thompson"
.
The Type Directors Club
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
- ^
"Bradbury Thompson"
.
ADC ? Global Awards & Club
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
- ^
Website dedicated to Alphabet 26
Archived
September 11, 2007, at the
Wayback Machine
, giving a brief overview
- ^
"
Bradbury Thompson
"
. Archived from
the original
on 2007-07-12
. Retrieved
2011-09-06
.
at
Communication Arts
, originally published March/April 1999
- ^
Mean 26
- ^
Weiss, Karen (2015-06-30).
"Bradbury Thompson papers"
.
www.aaa.si.edu
. Retrieved
2019-06-24
.
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International
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Artists
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Other
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