William C. Burgard III

William C. Burgard III is an illustrator and designer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has spent most of his career not on coins but on murals, festival posters, and portraits — and that ordinary working life is exactly what makes his coin work interesting.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan's Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design in 1979, and came back to teach there as a lecturer in 1993. He was hired to teach illustration; over the years he became a core drawing instructor, the kind who teaches students to look hard at a real object and get it onto paper. That discipline — observe first, simplify later — runs straight through to his coins.

His commercial work ranges widely: clients have included Starbucks and Sports Illustrated, and he served for twelve years as art director for the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, designing all of its large-format collectible posters. He also won the city's "Art in the Sky" contest to paint a 500,000-gallon water tower with a Matisse-inspired scene of the Huron River — herons, swans, and bluegill in teals and greens. "I'm really excited and proud of it," he said of the tank. "I live nearby and it was important to me to have a say as a part of the community."

In 2010, Burgard joined the United States Mint as an associate artist through its Artistic Infusion Program — the AIP, the Mint's roster of outside artists who submit designs in open competitions alongside the Mint's own staff. AIP artists draw the concept; a Mint sculptor-engraver then translates the winning drawing into the low, shallow sculpture a coin actually needs. The two jobs are separate, and a coin almost always carries two names: the designer and the engraver.

Burgard's most visible coin is the reverse — the tails side — of the 2012 Star-Spangled Banner silver dollar. His design is almost defiantly plain: a single modern American flag caught mid-wave, with no other ornament beyond the required wording. On a commemorative honoring the song that became the national anthem, the restraint is the point. The drawing was turned into metal by Mint sculptor-engraver Don Everhart.

A year later he was back on the gold. Burgard designed the obverse — the heads side — of the 2013 Helen Taft First Spouse $10 gold coin, the portrait of the First Lady remembered for bringing Washington's cherry trees to the Tidal Basin. That design was sculpted by Mint sculptor-engraver Phebe Hemphill. Two coins, two of the Mint's most respected engravers carrying his line into relief — relief being the raised, sculpted surface that catches the light when you tilt a coin.