1868 Born in Boston, July 10, son of a cartoonist on a Lynn daily newspaper.
1874 First finger in the “pi”—on being presented a box of characters brought home by his father for a small printing press Will bought with his own savings as a delivery boy.
1877 Moves to Ishpeming, a mining town in northern Michigan.
1880 A job (with a salary of $3 a week) as a printer’s devil, with the Iron Agitator (later Iron Ore).
1885 Foreman with Iron Ore at a man’s wages, $15 a week.
1886 To Chicago—and an art department apprenticeship with Rand McNally—sweeping, dusting, running errands, grinding tempera ... at $3 a week.
1887 With Knight & Leonard, Chicago’s leading fine printers, as a full-fledged designer at a salary of $21, and then $24 a week.
1889 Free-lancing in Chicago; studio in the Caxton Building.
1890 To Geneva, Ill., and first recognition through covers for Harper’s Weekly; posters for Stone & Kimball’s Chap Book; cover designs for the Inland Printer (perhaps the first magazine covers ever to be changed monthly).
1890 The creation of a widely copied type face named “Bradley” by ATF.
1893 An exhibition at the Chicago World’s Fair.
1895 To Springfield, Mass., the launching of his Wayside Press, “At the Sign of the Dandelion,” and plans for publication of Bradley: His Book ... his love for Caslon and the beginning of a new Caslon era as a result.
1895 The initial Bradley-designed paper sample book for Strathmore.
1896 Exhibits at Boston Arts and Crafts; Colonial typography attracts national attention.
1897 Caslon types on Strathmore Deckle Edge Papers prove successful; Bradley’s plant is expanded and moved to a loft in the Strathmore mill at Mittineague.
1898 Merges business with University Press, Boston. Opens design and art service in New York; specialty, bicycle catalogs.
1900 Mr. Bok, editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, commissions a series of eight full pages of house interiors for the Journal. A roman and italic face, used later for Peter Poodle, Toy Maker to the King, is designed for American Type Founders. While recovering from illness, Castle Perilous is written, later serialized in Collier’s with Bradley illustrations.
1902 Collier’s Weekly appears with Bradley cover (July 4).
1903 Heads campaign of type display and publicity for American Type Founders.
1904 Writing and designing Chap Books for American Type Founders; setting typographic style for decades.
1906 Writes and illustrates Peter Poodle, Toymaker to the King for Dodd Mead.
1907 Art Editor of Collier’s. Introduces new technique in coordinating make-up, art direction and typography. Holiday number becomes collectors’ item.
1910-15 Simultaneous art editorship of Good Housekeeping, Metropolitan, Success, Pearson’s, National Post. Revises typographic make-up of Christian Science Monitor ... beginning of a series of stories later published as Wonderbox Stories.
1915-17 Art supervision of motion picture serials for William Randolph Hearst, including Patria, starring Irene Castle.
1918-20 Writing and directing motion pictures independently. Production of Moongold, a Pierrot pantomime shot against black velvet, using properties but no sets, shown at the Criterion Theater in Times Square, New York.
1920 Back to Mr. Hearst as art and typography supervisor for Hearst magazines, newspapers, motion pictures, and the introduction, in Cosmopolitan, of many typographic innovations.
1923 Writes Spoils, a play in free verse for Hearst’s International.
1926 Restyles Delineator and Sunday magazine section of New York Herald Tribune (not This Week).
1927 Harper & Bros. publish Launcelot and the Ladies.
1930 Final, but far from inactive, retirement.
1931 Serves on AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year” jury; delivers address at exhibition opening, New York Public Library.
1950 Rounce and Coffin Club of Los Angeles award, October 28, for “Distinguished Contributions to Fine Printing,” at preview of Huntington Library exhibition, “Will Bradley: His Work.”
1953 New type ornaments (used at chapter-openings in the present book) designed for American Type Founders.
1954 Completion of a new paper specimen in Strathmore’s Distinguished Designers Series, almost sixty years after his first sample book for Strathmore. Introduced at University Club luncheon in New York, March 25.
1954 Award of gold medal by the American Institute of Graphic Arts at Annual meeting, May 19.

“I have never known any guide other than what to me happened to look right.”—w. b.

AN AFTERWORD

Few names in the annals of American typography gleam as brightly as Will Bradley’s. Even fewer have made so varied a graphic contribution as this gentle man, now eighty-six and revered as dean of American typographers.

In May, 1954, he was awarded the coveted gold medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The citation, necessarily brief around the rim, recalled one phase of his accomplishments: “To Will Bradley for a half-century of typographic achievement.”

A more revealing summary would be found in the commendation of the Rounce and Coffin Club award, presented at the Huntington Library in October, 1950. The Club held its special meeting to honor Mr. Bradley (then living in nearby Pasadena), and preview the Huntington retrospective Bradley exhibition, which included examples of his book design and illustration; articles and stories written; cover and poster design; type and type ornament for American Type Founders; and printing. Some seventy items were displayed, ranging from the Ishpeming (Michigan) Iron Ore masthead, designed in 1886, to a Christmas greeting drawn in 1948.

The award, for distinguished contributions to fine printing, read: “Because he has for seventy years been a source of creative inspiration in all the varied arts to which he has put his mind and hand; Because he found American printing at the end of the last century in a dreary condition, held up to it the examples of the early colonial printers, revived the simplicity and dignity of Pickering and caused to flourish again the use of Caslon and the other old style types; Because he created a wealth of new ornamentation and by his own demonstration introduced many original uses of ink, paper and bookbinding; Because he redesigned the American magazine and gave to it the charm of a new outer garment with each appearance; Because he cast the illumination of his talents upon the art of the poster, the children’s book, and even the motion picture; Because his great direct aid and even greater inspiration have been acknowledged by many American typographers, including such leaders as Frederic W. Goudy, W. A. Dwiggins, Oswald Cooper and T. M. Cleland; And finally because he has not ceased to be for the printers of our day, as for those of two previous generations, an inexhaustible fountain of kindly encouragement and new discoveries.”

Despite their glow, these words spell a clear appraisal of this man’s talents and graphic spirit. Ahead of his times, Mr. Bradley proved a pace-setting pioneer whose work was so fresh that its vitality is as measurable in the specimens of Strathmore and ATF, as in the Hearst periodical pages. Particularly when compared with that of his contemporaries, as Walter Dorwin Teague points out in his perceptive introduction.