Burkey Belser - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Burkey Belser is an American graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

. He is best known for his design of the Nutrition facts label, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated food labeling system that appears on all packaged foods in the United States, which has been called by some "the most frequently reproduced graphic in the world." He is also widely known for the pioneering work in legal advertising

Legal advertising

Legal advertising is advertising by lawyers and law firms.Legal marketing is a broader term referring to advertising and other practices, such as client relations and public relations.-In the United States:...

that earned him a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Legal Marketing Association as well as induction into that organization's Hall of Fame.

Biography

He was born July 8, 1947 in Columbia, South Carolina

Columbia, South Carolina

Columbia is the state capital and largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The population was 129,272 according to the 2010 census. Columbia is the county seat of Richland County, but a portion of the city extends into neighboring Lexington County. The city is the center of a metropolitan...

. The Belser family has been long-established in the South, with Christian Belser (1752–1812) arriving in Charleston

Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...

from Baden-Baden, Duchy of Württemberg in 1787. A family plantation, Sunnyside on Edisto, South Carolina

Edisto, South Carolina

Edisto Island is one of South Carolina's Sea Islands, the larger part of which lies in Charleston County, with its southern tip in Colleton County. The Charleston County part is a census-designated place. The population was 2,301 at the 2000 census...

, has been exclusively in family hands from the Mikell side of the family for over 300 years. Summer-long stays in the natural setting of the plantation awakened his artistic predilection. He took painting and drawing courses at the University of South Carolina

University of South Carolina

The University of South Carolina is a public, co-educational research university located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with 7 surrounding satellite campuses. Its historic campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House...

when he was eight. He redrew entire issues of The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

cartoons before settling on favorite cartoonists such as William Steig

William Steig

William Steig was a prolific American cartoonist, sculptor and, later in life, an author of popular children's literature...

and Charles Barsotti

Charles Barsotti

Charles Barsotti is an American cartoonist who has contributed gag cartoons to major magazines.Born in San Marcos, Texas, Barsotti grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Texas State University in 1955. He has been the cartoon editor of The Saturday Evening Post and has been a staff cartoonist...

.

His parents divorced in 1953. Belser lived another two years in Columbia with his mother and sister before moving with them and his stepfather to Birmingham, Alabama, for a year, then on to Memphis, Tennessee, for his junior high and high school years. Belser was given the President's Award by the student body, an award given to the individual judged to have contributed most to the high school. He also was an Eagle Scout

Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America)

Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America . A Scout who attains this rank is called an Eagle Scout or Eagle. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been earned by more than 2 million young men...

and earned his God & Country Award.

Belser was not trained in graphic design. He was an English major and an art minor at Davidson College

Davidson College

Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine, although it has recently dropped to 11th in U.S. News...

in North Carolina (the school offered no graphic design courses). During the decade following college, Belser trained himself to be a designer.

In 1992, he was contacted by David Aaron Kessler

David Aaron Kessler

David Aaron Kessler is an American pediatrician, lawyer, author, and administrator...

's staff at the FDA to help with the Nutrition Facts label because of his prior success designing the EnergyGuide that appears on all major appliances in the U.S. Because Congress had mandated the reformulation of the label but not its redesign, Belser undertook the project as a pro bono effort, for which he received a Presidential Design Award from President Bill Clinton. Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli is a designer who has done work in a number of areas ranging from package design to furniture design to public signage to showroom design through Vignelli Associates, which he co-founded with his wife, Lella...

called it a "masterpiece." The success of that initiative led the FDA to once again call on Belser to design the Drug Facts label that now appears on all over-the-counter drugs.

On another vastly different design front, Belser began working with law firms shortly after the Bates v. State Bar of Arizona

Bates v. State Bar of Arizona

In Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, , the Supreme Court first allowed lawyers to advertise their services. By holding that lawyer advertising was a kind of commercial speech protected by the First Amendment, the Court upset the tradition among lawyers that it demeaned the profession as a whole for...

decision allowed lawyers to advertise. Over the next 30 years, the sustained body of work emanating from Greenfield/Belser Ltd

Greenfield Belser

Greenfield/Belser Ltd. is a brand design firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. that focuses on professional services marketing. The firm is organized to deliver four core services: brand research and brand strategy, Web solutions, identity and collateral design and development and advertising...

., influenced countless others in their approach to law firm marketing.

Career

Belser held two jobs after college before beginning his career as a freelance designer. After returning from a year at the University of Montpellier

University of Montpellier

The University of Montpellier was a French university in Montpellier in the Languedoc-Roussillon région of the south of France. Its present-day successor universities are the University of Montpellier 1, Montpellier 2 University and Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III.-History:The university...

in southern France in 1969-1970, Belser joined the provocative magazine published by Ralph Ginzburg

Ralph Ginzburg

Ralph Ginzburg was an American author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist. He was best known for publishing books and magazines on erotica and art and for his conviction in 1963 for violating federal obscenity laws....

, Avant Garde, in New York City, ultimately becoming its circulation director. After a year at the magazine, Belser left to travel from Istanbul to Kathmandu. Upon returning, he settled in Washington, D.C. and became the business manager for The Righteous Apple, a graphic design studio created for the non-profit black cultural arts organization, New Thing Art & Architecture Center. After 18 months, Belser left to build a freelance career. In 1978, he incorporated Burkey Belser, Inc, the same year he married Donna Greenfield who created Greenfield/Belser

Greenfield Belser

, Inc, a design consultancy focused on professional services. The businesses were merged in 1984 to create Greenfield/Belser Ltd

Greenfield Belser

.

Belser's first brochure for a law firm was designed in 1983 for the Virginia firm of McGuire Woods & Battle. It was a 12-page hardcover book, modeled on 18th century book design. The brochure took a Gold Award at the Art Directors Club of Washington, D.C., proving that design for law firms could be done in an instructive, informative and innovative manner. Belser quickly expanded the tactical and graphical legal vocabulary, creating the very first ads for a law firm, Howrey & Simon

Howrey LLP

Howrey LLP was a global law firm that practiced antitrust, global litigation and intellectual property law. At its peak Howrey had more than 500 attorneys in 16 locations worldwide.-History:...

, in 1992. He was also among the first to create a law firm logo, a "designed" law firm website, law firm newsletters and every other marketing tool that corporations use routinely today but that were simply unknown in the legal industry at that time. The transformation of marketing in the legal industry was not unlike that of the banking industry in the 1970s and the accounting industry shortly thereafter—all of which had been for centuries either not permitted to "advertise" or bound by custom and decorum from doing so.

Publications

Belser authored 25 Years of Legal Branding (Sunnyside Press) published in 2004, a compilation of the Greenfield/Belser Ltd's

Greenfield Belser

work from 1979-2004. His work also appears in other publications including: Absolutely the Newest Logos, Best of Corporate Identity Design, Big Book of Corporate Identity Designs (Watson-Guptill), Big Book of Design Ideas (Collins Design), Big Book of Letterhead and website Designs (Watson-Guptill), Global Corporate Identity, Global Graphics: Symbols (Rockport Publishing), HOW Colossal Design, Large Graphics (Rockport Publishing), The Newest Logos, Promotions that Work (Rockport Publishing), Small Graphics (Rockport Publishing),White Graphics (Rockport Publishing).

Awards

Belser was one of nine judges for the 2007 Communication Arts

Communication Arts

Communication Arts is the largest international trade journal of visual communications. Founded in 1959 by Richard Coyne and Robert Blanchard, the magazine’s coverage includes graphic design, advertising, photography, illustration and interactive media. The magazine continues to be edited and...

Design Annual, regarded by many as the nation's most prestigious graphic design competition. Since 1974, Belser has won hundreds of awards for his work in graphic design. Some of the competitions that have awarded him for his work include: AIGA

Aiga

‘Aiga is a word in the Samoan language which means 'family.' The aiga is the family unit of Samoan society and differs from the Western sense in that it consists more than just a mother, father and children. The Samoan family, also referred to as an 'extended family' is based on the culture's...

50, American Corporate Identity, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts

Communication Arts

(Illustration Annual), Creativity magazine, American Graphic Design Awards (Graphic Design: USA), Graphis Inc., International Engraved Graphics Association, Legal Marketing Association Your Honor Awards, Logo 2000, 2002, Los Angeles Society of Illustrators, Print
Print (magazine)
The publication, Print, A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts, was a limited edition quarterly periodical begun in 1940 and continued under different names up to the present day as Print, a bimonthly American magazine about visual culture and design.In its current format, Print documents and...

, Society for Marketing Professional Services, Webby Awards

Webby Awards

A Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.