“At the beginning, it wasn’t that good because the people who were doing the kerning weren’t typographers. “A very important question is, ‘Has type had any benefits since it went into the computer?'” Benguiat says. Unlike other designers of his generation, Benguiat doesn’t fear the computer. (The print version is now defunct, though the magazine can still be found , a quarterly publication that covered design and typography better than any other magazine then or now. It was the beginning of a long association with ITC that included art direction of the excellent Originally just a single-weight face from the 1920s, Benguiat redrew it, adding different weights and an italic version. “I’d known him since my Bar Mitzvah.”īenguiat’s first project at ITC was Souvenir. “Herb Lubalin and I were partners,” Benguiat says. Benguiat’s association with other design luminaries such as ITC partner Herb Lubalin began very early on. He was instrumental in the establishment of the International Typeface Corporation, the cornerstone type foundry owned by Aaron Burns, the Lubalin Burns Corporation, and Photo Lettering.
It’s rare to be able to point out a living being who actually created a typeface - Benguiat being a notable exception.īenguiat continued to work as a designer and art director for several agencies and studios, as well as on his own. While modern typography can trace its history back to Gutenberg or Aldus Manutius, the roots of digital typography are harder to find. Edward Benguiat is one of those someones. Typography and font generation are now as invisible to us as the inner workings of a car engine - if it’s working right, we don’t even think about it.īut there was a time when someone had to draw by hand those beautiful typefaces, those elegant characters we throw around our system folders so cavalierly. We’ve reached a stage where designers - several steps removed from the nuts and bolts of their digital machinery - take a lot of the tools they use for granted. That makes Benguiat a throwback to a different era, particularly with the digital revolution now into its second generation. But the man behind those glyphs - the one for whom the face is named - is a singular character, with an increasingly rare approach to design. The name Benguiat is familiar to many as a typeface. “I’ve never designed anything that I’ve ever been happy with when it’s finished,” Benguiat says. Hardly - he insists that he’s never satisfied with any finished product. ‘ masthead to his credit, you’d think Benguiat would be pretty satisfied with his handiwork. With a logo as prominent as the one on the His thought was, ‘Change it.’ My thought was, ‘OK, we’ll change it - but if we change it, nobody will recognize it.’ So all I did was take it and fix it.” A lot of freehand,” says Benguiat, the father of such typefaces as Souvenir, Korinna, Era, Fenice, Avant Garde Gothic, ITC American Typewriter, and Edwardian Script. “One hundred pen points, straight edges, freehand. Benguiat certainly recognizes it - he’s the one who drew it. maybe the most recognizable newspaper typeface in the country. Take the logo that sits atop the front page of the Consider its form and elegance, and realize that before it was given all its hints in Icarus, or Fontographer, it was a trail of lead and ink coming from the pen of someone like Edward Benguiat.
The next time you choose a font, you might pause for a moment and really look at the type.
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