Alphabet 26 is Bradbury Thompson’s radical proposal for the redesign of the alphabet. Click here to read excerpts from an essay that he wrote to accompany a printed piece that he planned to have published at the beginning of 1996.
Bradbury Thompson (1911-1995) sadly died before its completion.
Sometimes called the father of modern magazine design, Bradbury Thompson was one of the most talented (and nicest) designers America has produced. Below is an excerpt from the inside flap of his book, The Art of Graphic Design (Yale 1988).
The art director of Mademoiselle and design director of Art News and Art News Annual in the decades after World War II, he also designed the formats for some three dozen other magazines, including Smithsonian.
Thompson is in addition a distinguished designer of limited edition books, postage stamps, rationalized alphabets, corporate identification programs, trademarks, and sacred works (most notable, the Washburn College Bible, in which the words are set in the cadence of speech).
When it came to the blending of photography, typography and color, nobody did it better than Bradbury Thompson. In his own quiet way, he expanded the boundaries of the printed page and influenced the design of a generation of art directors.
Learn more about: Bradbury Thompson and his Alphabet 26.
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