Bradbury Thompson
Bradbury Thompson, photograph by Henry Groskinsky
Bradbury Thompson is a designer I’ve admired for years. Although I’d never met him before in person, I was familiar with his work. After all, he has enough awards and citations to fill a book, including the three biggies:
Through the early morning mist, Bridgeport, Connecticut, slowly came into view. At dockside I was met by my art director, Minoru Morita, and together we drove to Thompson’s home, some twenty minutes away in Greenwich.
The stamp entitled Learning Never Ends was designed by Thompson in honor of the new United States Department of Education. It reproduces a painting by the late master, Josef Albers, a former associate of Brad at the Yale School of Art. The image with its special gradation of bright colors provides an active illusionary symbol for the “never ending” theme. (1980)
Architecturally akin to the 19th century houses of Henry Hobson Richardson, Thompson’s home stood nested back among stately maple trees that were ablaze with autumn leaves.
The Legend greeted us personally at his front door. He still has the keen gaze of an eagle. Looking trim, fit and distinguished, the man looked exactly like I’ve always imagined.
He graciously invited us into his friendly living room. There he patiently recounted once again his life story to yet another curious reporter.
Brad Thompson was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, deep in the prairies of the nation’s heartland. For twenty-seven years he lived in the same house he was born in. Unlike so many people who have made it, he does not attribute all of his success to the big city. Far from it. His success story started with midwestern teachers, libraries and drug stores.
“Although I lived out in Topeka, I had access to every European, New York and Chicago graphic arts publication in the city and college libraries. All of the magazines were there in a local drug store that stocked all kinds of monthly publications from all over the country, and whenever I had time off I went in there and just sat and browsed through all these magazines.
“So you didn’t necessarily have to live in New York City to see good design,” he commented.
After junior high school, Brad got his first job working in a civil engineering office. “It was a small office,” he recalled, “with three wonderful men who were excellent draftsmen and engineers. I worked there all through high school and in the summers. I even went on surveying trips and took field notes. During my years at Washburn College I worked for the State Highway Commission. It was an excellent experience: working on great plans for roads and bridges with a bunch of kind older men.”
It was there that some foundations for design were laid, Thompson suggests. The experience gave him the discipline for neatness and organization that he would need in his future as a creative graphic designer.
High school provided another invaluable experience for his future career. During high school, I was the designer of three yearbooks and in college I was the designer and editor of two yearbooks.
“I think it’s the best education that a graphic designer can have. Every book required my going to the print shop, which was nearby”
Here Brad drives home a typical inspirational message to the graphic arts world through wickets of inverted “U“‘s. After all, says the copy, “In hoop-skin days the game of croquet turned the “U” In “Unladylike” upside down with a maze of wickets. . . .” The unlikely combination of a stylized mallet and wooden balls, together with Winslow Homer’s Croquet Scene, are facilely resolved by the designer in a strong graphic statement. (1955)
The Steves Printing Company did the high school books. The young designer went over there so frequently that the family practically adopted him.
“It was the best place anybody could have to learn. There was Guy Steves; he was the business manager. Maude Steves, his wife, was the secretary and Roy Steves was the pressman. There were also Jay Steves, the man on the stone, and his son, Harold, the linotype operator, as well as Bob Steves, the binder. ”
At Washburn College Brad majored in economics, but he couldn’t stay away from publishing, and he became the designer and editor of two All-American Yearbooks.
“At college the editor and business manager were selected by political parties,” he recalled. “They were totally responsible financially. If we went broke and went into the hole. we would have had to make it up in the summer to pay it back!”
Fortunately, he had terrific business managers and Brad was able to concentrate on editing and designing the books.
“Taking full responsibility for the publication was the most valuable experience. Working with older printers, engravers and binders was a most valuable graphic design education.”
After college, Thompson was hired by Capper Publications in Topeka as a book and magazine designer where he worked with two older experienced sympathetic artists. His job for four years also was to teach younger men and women how to design their school and college yearbooks.
Brad believed that Good Printing Travels Far and Wide And so he set out aboard a black and white train on tracks of type and took us on a playful journey across trestles and through tunnels, reminding us of paper, ink, effort and effect However, it all originated when the designer entertained a five-year old son on a New York apartment floor with railroad tracks on layout paper made with two large lead pencils held together with a rubber band (1946).
The year of decision for Bradbury Thompson was 1938. He was twenty-seven. He actually had years of work experience behind him and felt it was time he had to move on. He left Topeka for the hustle and bustle of New York City.
“It was hard to leave a place where you had lived all your life; leaving your family and all your friends . . . but New York is New York; you just had to be there.”
New York didn’t let him down. That very first week he had a job as art director for Rogers-Kellogg-Stillson and Brad Thompson was on his wav to becoming one of the most respected graphic designers in America.
It all started with his first day on the job. A man came in with a blank dummy and said, “Here. Do this issue of Westvaco Inspirations.” Eventually Thompson would end up designing sixty more issues after that first one.
Thompson’s demonic African mask made from the letters of Westvaco is a lot more sinister than the still life at its right. Actually, the idea came from a six year-old daughter who brought home from school a drawing of a large face with her first printed words in its mouth (1958)
Thompson’s talent for innovation in graphic design was readily apparent to the nation. He became famous for his creative use of primary colors, typography, photography, engraving and print-ing techniques.
Because there was very little money for special photography and artwork, he became a great researcher of engravings from libraries, museums, magazines; wherever he could think to look.
“I was always digging through old archives for materials,” says Brad. And for that reason the pages in the Westvaco Inspirations are so uniquely composed, often combining type with rare engravings.
Thompson also grew more and more appreciative of the subtle beauty of good typography.
In this Rock & Roll spread, Thompson takes us to the edge of his discovery and allows us to lean over and observe the illusion of color in motion, as the saxophonist comes alive on the whirling record. (1958)
“In 1940 publications, even the visual ones, were fitted into two or three columns. Everything had to be in columns, pretty much like newspapers. But here, finally, I was privileged to produce designs where images and words are synonymous.” This is a contribution to the genesis of graphic design as we know it today.
During World War II, Thompson experimented at home with his innovative designs of Westvaco Inspirations while working full time at the State Department’s Office of War Information
In 1945 Bradbury Thompson became art director of Mademoiselle magazine and also design director of Art News and Art News Annual. In the years thereafter, Thompson designed and redesigned over thirty-five magazines, including Smithsonian, Progressive Architecture and Harvard Business Review.
These two Mademoiselle covers are as chic and contemporary today as they were when Thompson designed them in 1950.
Thompson’s innovations in style and format in Westvaco Inspirations have remained a centerpiece of the many publications he’s worked on, and Brad attributes many of these innovations to his family, especially his children when they were growing up. It was here that his often playful images got their inspiration.
“I used to think, maybe, I’d stay a bachelor all my life, so I could just concentrate on work. But instead, I married and received many of my inspirations from the family.”
Brad married Deen Dodge, his Kansas-born wife of 45 years; they had four children while living in the heart of Manhattan. Like most parents, he tried to direct the children into law, medicine and business, but instead all insisted on following him in one way or another. His older son, Mark, is an architect and teaches city planning at the University of Pennsylvania. His younger son, Dodge, an art historian, is an assistant director of the National Gallery of Art. Elizabeth, his younger daughter, is a painter, living in New York City; while his older daughter, Leslie, is a dancer and teacher of dance.
Bradbury Thompson’s fame is not restricted to books and magazines. He is also famous for his design of stamps. He suggested the logo USA found on all our postage stamps. He felt it was important for the postal service to have a consistent identification like private corporations.
This 1984 Christmas Stamp, using a detail of the painting by Renaissance artist Fra Filippo Lippi, is the 13th masterpiece Christmas stamp designed by Thompson since 1971. Based upon his 27 years experience as Design Director of Art News, Brad has designed many art masterpiece issues, including the Universal Postal Union block of eight stamps.
In 1958 Thompson was recommended by members of Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield’s Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee for his first stamp commission. Today he has 79 designs officially to his credit, including stamps honoring American Music (1964), Universal Postal Union (1974) Bicentennial Series (1975–1979), Folk Art (1979), Indian Art (1980), America’s Libraries (1982), Love Stamp III (1984).
Brad Thompson feels that design work is so fulfilling because it’s a learning experience every time he gets involved. The work he is most proud of is the design for the Washburn College Bible. A limited-edition publication, only 398 individual books were printed for this masterpiece. Published in 1979, it used the King James version and the typography was set entirely with ragged right phrases—set as they would be spoken in conversation. The typeface used was Sabon Antiqua, designed by Jan Tschichold; it was developed for phototypography especially for this Bible. Religious masterpieces spanning 17 centuries are used to illustrate the work, including three signed prints by Josef Albers as frontispieces for the three volumes.
This monumental work—perhaps Brad’s Mona Lisa—runs more than 1800 pages, in three leather-bound volumes. Each is gold stamped with its title and with an embossed symbol that Thompson adapted from a mosaic pattern found on a mausoleum built in 350 A.D. for the daughter of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome. The frontispiece of each volume is an original screen print by Josef Albers, signed, dated, titled and numbered by the artist shortly before his death in 1976. On the opening spread of each of the 66 books is a reproduction of a masterpiece of religious art relevant to the content of that book. (1979)
Today Brad Thompson is as active in design as ever, and is teaching in the graphics program at Yale, as he has since 1956.
The stamp of history is clear. Bradbury Thompson is an American original. Innovative and hardworking, he is a man unafraid to break the staid rules to create new images with typography.
Crossing Long Island Sound back to Port Jefferson, under a perfect twilight sky, I thought back to the few hours I had spent with Brad and realized that he gave me a real sense of the history of modern American typography, as well as an insight into the making of great graphic design.
John Luke
This article first appeared in the January 1985 issue of Gutenberg & Family: The Magazine of the Type Directors Club, volume 1, number 1, pp. 5–11.
In this jacket for the fifth AIGA annual book, just released, Bradbury Thompson symbolizes Graphic Design with familiar tools and principles of the art. The triangles represent the geometric principles, the french curves represent the rhythmical. The eye on the front jacket represents the humanistic eye of the designer, the eyes on the back jacket are the eyes of the designer
America’s Libraries are symbolized by Thompson with our roman alphabet which makes possible the written and printed retention and dissemination of knowledge. The first three letters (ABC) and the last (XYZ) are from the 1526 book, Champ Fleury, by Geofroy Tory. The typeface of the stamp is truly compatible with the alphabet of Tory, having been cut originally by his famous student, Claude Garamond, and now known as Sabon. (1980)
Love Stamp III, designed by Brad with Bodoni-Didot letters and spectrum-like colors, was printed on a new eight-color gravure-intaglio press, with the letters hand engraved for intaglio presswork and the hearts printed in gravure. The stamp was issued in honor of the oldest and finest of human emotions. (1984)
Sorcerer and alchemist, Thompson could transmute engravings and type into elegant masterpieces of graphic design. Here Brad catches the evolution of a sneeze In a powerful and witty spread that borders on great surrealistic art, as it brings sound to the printed page. (1949)