16 Facts About Bradbury Thompson

Bradbury Thompson was an American graphic designer and art director known for his work designing magazines and postage stamps.

Bradbury Thompson was born on March 25,1911, in Topeka, Kansas, and attended Topeka High School.

Bradbury Thompson attended Washburn College, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Fraternity, the yearbook editor and designer.

Bradbury Thompson graduated in 1934 with a degree in economics and a minor in art.

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 Bradbury 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.

Bradbury 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, by this name, in over 25 venues across the United States.

In total, Bradbury Thompson designed 35 magazines, including Business Week, the Harvard Business Review, and Smithsonian magazine.

Bradbury Thompson worked in this role until 1978, influencing the design of stamps.

Bradbury 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 Bradbury Thompson to break the text like a spoken cadence.

Bradbury Thompson served on the faculty of Yale University from 1956 to 1995.

Bradbury Thompson was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1977 and received the Type Director's Club Medal in 1986.

In 1950, Bradbury 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.

Bradbury Thompson first published the alphabet in a Westvaco Inspirations for Printers.

Bradbury Thompson's papers are housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at the Yale University Library.