Westvaco Inspirations^201
Bradbury ThompsonA graphic designer’s
influence is not
measured by how many
acolytes mimic his style
or by how many awards
he has won, but rather
by what he alone has
contributed to the visual
language. Since such
judgments are subjective,
the criteria used to
determine influence
might be an answer to
the question: If the particular designer had never existed, would the field be
worse off? To be more specific, if a young man from Topeka, Kansas, by the
name of Bradbury Thompson ( 1911 – 1995 ), had not left his job designing
high school yearbooks, and had not come to New York City in the late
1930 s, would a significant chapter of American graphic design history have
been written?
If not for Thompson, WestvacoInspirations, which in the 1930 s
was a paper company’s spiritless promotional brochure, might never have
become the bible of graphic design and textbook for a generation. If
Thompson was never a magazine art director (Mademoiselle,Art News,
and others), book, postage stamp, or advertising designer; if all he ever
accomplished during his fifty-year career was to design and edit sixty issues
of a periodical that he transformed into a journal of modern layout and
typography—including special issues devoted to such themes as “Type as a
Toy,” “Primitive Art as Modern Design,” and the phonetic “Monalphabet”
(which eliminated the need for separate upper- and lowercase letters)—his
place as a pioneer of American graphic design would still be locked in for
the ages.
In 1938 Thompson left the American heartland without a clue that
he would eventually become the art director and designer for some very
influential magazines, or a teacher at Yale University, or one of the chief
designers for the United States Postal Service. He just came East to work
for one of those fabled art directors in the big city that he had read about