What are these advantages, and why do they open a door to exceptional opportunities not known in the Nineties? First, and perhaps of greatest importance, is the typographic consciousness now prevalent, especially in the advertising and business world, where it is universally recognized that effective typography and design increase sales. Another advantage is to be found in the significant mechanical advances of the last few years, the significance of the growing importance of offset printing, presenting so many opportunities yet to be grasped by the designer. And, an infant industry now, but one of vast possibilities, is commercial silk-screen printing. But upon my return to New York after many years in California I think my greatest thrill came when I witnessed the mechanical setting of type by photography. Always I have liked the feel of putting type into the stick, and I liked to see the composition growing on the galley. In all my years of working with type I have never made a preparatory lay-out, except when the composition had to be done by another, which happened only on magazine headings after a style had been determined in advance. But this is an age of lay-outs, and in this new photographic process with the use of photographic enlargements, there are possibilities for display composition of any required size, and great variety, presenting intriguing possibilities for the creative designer and typographer. All such steadily growing advances present opportunities which were nonexistent back in my own youthful days. Together with the superior training enjoyed by the youth of today, they have changed conditions into a new world fraught with wonderful opportunities far beyond any I knew in the Nineties. w b Short Hills, New Jersey May, 1954 A CHRONOLOGY This brief biography of the man called Dean of American Designers by _The Saturday Evening Post_ and Dean of American Art Editors by _Publishers’ Weekly_, is amplified from its earlier compilation and printing as a Typophile keepsake in 1948. It was first distributed at a birthday luncheon held in New York, for Mr. Bradley’s eightieth. 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.