Burkey Belser

Burkey Belser died September 25, 2023, at age 76.

Burkey Belser, a COLPM Fellow from 1999-2018, died at age 76 of bladder cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland.

As an independent designer, Belser won a Gold Award at the Art Directors Club of Washington, D.C., for the 18th century styled brochure he designed for the law firm McGuire Woods & Battle. His work helped change the way law firms presented and marketed themselves.

Belser won hundreds of additional awards in every major field of graphic design. An accomplished writer and public speaker, Burkey wrote for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The American Lawyer, National Law Journal, and many other industry magazines. He wrote about design principles in such books as 25 Years of Legal Branding and Best of Corporate Identity Design.

Burkey regularly spoke about marketing communications to professional audiences, such as the Marketing Partners Forum and Law Leaders Forum as well as the ABA, the Association of Legal Administrators, the Legal Marketing Association, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In 1997, Burkey was awarded a Presidential Design Award by President Bill Clinton for his design of Nutrition Facts, the nation’s food labeling system.

Survivors include his wife (Donna Greenfield) and two children.