The Word: with clarity and simple elegance

For a book that millions of people claim to have influenced their lives I'm amazed at the poor quality of most editions that have been published and how perfect this Washburn Bible is. The story starts in 1969 with Field Enterprises, in Chicago, asking designer Bradbury Thompson to think about a complete visual overhaul of the existing standard Bible. Unfortunately the project was abandoned in 1972 because of economic circumstances so Thompson approached Washburn College who provided backing and a Limited Edition three volume set came out in 1977. The success of that title convinced Oxford Uni Press to print this one volume edition.

Thompson's brilliant typographic idea for this King James text Bible was to discard the traditional oblong squared-up two columns setting per page for a much simpler two columns with a varying line length so the text was ragged on the right. This avoided excessive hyphenations at the end of a line and allowed even spacing between the words. Because the text is now in phrase-length lines the columns vary in depth, though only by five lines or less, so that the top of each one starts with a new verse. The chapter and verse numbers are set in the margin to the left of each column which avoids having these dropped into the text and hindering the narrative flow. I found this annoyance so common in many Bibles I looked at to compare with this Washburn edition. The large page size means the type is a generous eleven point (called Sabon Antiqua) with a minimum of words in capitals and no italics. No quotation marks for speech either because 'He said' or 'Saying' are always on separate lines before the quotation.

To break up all the pages of text each book in the Old and New Testament starts with one of sixty-six religious paintings by fifty-five artists painted over seventeen centuries. These have short captions and the biblical text that provided the inspiration to the artists. European born  Josef Albers provides three simple but beautiful linear abstracts at the start of the three sections of this Bible. The front pages have an introduction explaining the thinking behind this new typographic interpretation.

Bradbury Thompson, who died in 1995, was a great print designer, probably best known for his work for Westvaco paper company and their magazine 'Inspiration for Printers' but he also designed stamps for the USPS, magazines (Mademoiselle for example) and books but I think it is his remarkable design of this Bible that he should be remembered for. He achieved something special here, a book where it is a joy to turn the pages and see an honesty of presentation that the words deserve. A design and typographic masterpiece.