Bradbury Thompson

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.[http://www.washburn.edu/alumni/BTC/about.htm Bradbury Thompson Alumni Center - About the center] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070601044229/http://www.washburn.edu/alumni/BTC/about.htm |date=June 1, 2007 }}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/04/arts/j-bradbury-thompson-dies-designer-and-art-director-84.html|title=J. Bradbury Thompson Dies; Designer and Art Director, 84|last=Gelder|first=Lawrence Van|date=1995-11-04|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-06-24|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.aiga.org/medal|title=AIGA Medalists|website=AIGA {{!}} the professional association for design|access-date=2019-06-24}} A facility called the Bradbury Thompson Alumni Center now stands at Washburn. In 1938, Thompson designed the college's mascot, The Ichabod.{{Cite web|url=https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/bradbury-thompson/18146|title=Bradbury Thompson - Kansapedia - Kansas Historical Society|website=www.kshs.org|access-date=2019-06-24}}

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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.printmag.com/article/bradbury-thompsons-usa/|title=Bradbury Thompson's USA|last=Heller|first=Steven|date=2010-01-25|website=Print Magazine|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-24}}

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. 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.Housley, Kathleen L. (2001). Emily Hall Tremaine: Collector on the Cusp, (p. 98). Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation: Meriden, CT. In total, Thompson designed 35 magazines, including Business Week, the Harvard Business Review, and Smithsonian magazine.

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.

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.{{cite book|title=Holy Bible|last=Thompson|first=Bradbury|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1980|isbn=0-19-502786-8|location=Oxford Oxfordshire}}

Thompson served on the faculty of Yale University from 1956 to 1995. 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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.tdc.org/profiles/bradbury-thompson/|title=Bradbury Thompson|website=The Type Directors Club|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-24}}{{Cite web|url=http://adcglobal.org/hall-of-fame/bradbury-thompson/|title=Bradbury Thompson|website=ADC • Global Awards & Club|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-24}}

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.

File:Alphabet 26 by Bradbury Thompson.png

In 1950, Thompson developed a typeface 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. 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, as well as the forms of U/u with various sans-serif typefaces.) The simplification was intended to make the letters of the alphabet more logical and intuitive, making the alphabet easier to learn and use.[http://www.pbtweb.com/alpha26/index.html Website dedicated to Alphabet 26] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070911013215/http://www.pbtweb.com/alpha26/index.html |date=September 11, 2007 }}, giving a brief overview Thompson first published the alphabet in a Westvaco Inspirations for Printers.{{cite web|url=http://www.commarts.com/ca/feapion/brad|title=Bradbury Thompson|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070712131326/http://www.commarts.com/ca/feapion/brad|archivedate=2007-07-12|url-status=dead|accessdate=2011-09-06}} at Communication Arts, originally published March/April 1999

The set of letters for Alphabet 26 (normal and bold weights) is:

The following example uses the CSS rule font-variant-caps: unicase (for all lowercase letters only), which was not supported by many browsers as of July 2017:

The following closer approximation, using the CSS rule font-variant-caps: small-caps (on specific lowercase letters), should work in most current browsers (but may suffer from slight variations in weight and height):

Thompson died on November 1, 1995, in Greenwich, Connecticut. His papers are housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago{{Cite web |last=Weiss |first=Karen |date=2015-06-30 |title=Bradbury Thompson papers |url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/surveys/chicago/university-illinois-chicago-richard-j-daley-library-special-collectio-67 |access-date=2019-06-24 |website=www.aaa.si.edu |language=en}} and at the Yale University Library.{{Cite web |title=Collection: Bradbury Thompson papers |url=https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/3757 |url-status=live |access-date=2025-03-10 |website=Archives at Yale}} Books from his personal collection were donated to the National Gallery of Art Library in 2000."Resources for Scholarly Research", 2000 Annual Report. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2001, p [https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/About/pdf/annual-reports/annual-report-2000.pdf 33].

• The Art of Graphic Design, Yale University Press, 1988. ({{ISBN|978-0300043013}})

• List of AIGA medalists
• Rusher's Patent Types

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090411121724/http://people.rit.edu/rrrfad/html/gr_history/timelines/timelines_bradbury_thom.html Timeline of Thompson's life]
• [http://2afuture.me/bradbury_thompsons_alphabet_26 Alphabet 26 on 2 a future me website]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070911013215/http://www.pbtweb.com/alpha26/index.html Alphabet 26 on the website of Paul Baker Typography]
• [http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1977/?id=277 Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work]
• [http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.1794 Bradbury Thompson Papers (MS 1794).] Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

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Category:1911 births

Category:1995 deaths

Category:AIGA medalists

Category:American graphic designers

Category:People of the United States Office of War Information

Category:Typography

Category:American stamp designers

Category:Topeka High School alumni