User:Cheswash/Leroy Winbush

LeRoy Winbush:
LeRoy Winbush was an art director and operated his own Design firm Winbush Associates.

Winbush was born in Memphis, Tennessee, his parents LeRoy (Lee) Winbush Sr. and Alberta Meabane however he spent his childhood in Detroit. When Winbush was about fourteen his mother moved the family to Chicago, on the Southside, where Winbush graduated from Englewood High School.

Winbush began his career in Chicago in 1936. He started out as an apprentice to a sign painter, then designed signs, murals and flyers for the Regal Theater. From this experience Winbush became the art director for Goldblatt's department store chain, and the store's first Black employee. Although he initially started out in the department store's sign shop, eventually working his way up to become the Art Director overseeing a staff of about 60 people.

In 1945 Winbush founded his own firm, Winbush Associates. Winbush was known as a successful businessman and entrepreneur. From his past experiences with Goldbatt's, he soon became highly regarded for his designs of window displays for some of Chicago's major banks.

During the same time he operated WInbush Associates, he was tapped by Johnson Publishing as a consultant where he oversaw the the arti direction of the Negro Digest, Hue Magazine, Cooper, EBONY, Tan Confessions, and JET magazines. Winbush also, designed the stylized handbrushed Logo for Jet Magazine, which references what he would have done as a sign painter. Other publications project included DUKE magazine, published in 1957 it was short-lived, (publishing only six issues, however, it was the first Black male pinup magazine. Dan Burley was a well known Black journalist was the founder and editor. At the same time he consulted with with Johnson Publishing he also worked with Consolidated Manufacturing His designs for EBONY won an award from the Chicago Art Directors Club. He was president of the South Side Community Art Center. served as art director for Consolidated Manufacturing as well as Johnson Publishing, where he art directed and designed layouts for

Despite having no formal art/design training, Winbush taught communication design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. Beginning in 1992, Winbush consulted for the DuSable Museum. Other exhibition projects include him designing the sickle-cell anemia installation for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

Winbush was the first black member of the Art Directors Club of Chicago. It took him seven years of petitioning the club to join; later he served as the club's president. He was chairman of the International Design Conference in Aspen in 1959. Winbush worked on Illinois's exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair. In 1985, having become an avid scuba diver, Winbush helped design an underwater reef at Epcot.