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Passing down knowledge and increasing relevance:
Douglas Davis on Ed Benguiat’s impact on creative fields
Ed Benguiat was fond of—if not to say—obsessed with letters. During client meetings he doodled in Spencerian Script, the American standard writing style for business correspondence before typewriter adoption. In his lifetime Benguiat created over 600 typefaces and left his stamp on everything from the New York Times to Esquire to Stranger Things.
He was awarded the TDC Medal in 1989 and served as TDC Board President in 1990–1991. Brooklyn-based Douglas Davis, an Emmy Award-winning strategist, author, professor as well as the TDC advisory board member, took Benguiat's type class at the School of Visual Arts in 2010. Back then he was thrilled by both Benguiat’s unique teaching approach and how his personal values closely aligned with his own.
Currently Douglas serves on the advisory boards of The University of Oregon’s Masters in Advertising and Brand Responsibility, and City College’s Masters in Branding and Integrated Communications. He has found an international audience interested in his approach to blurring the lines between advertising, design, and business education—and wrote Creative Strategy and the Business of Design in 2016.
In this piece, Douglas Davis contemplates the impact of the prolific type designer and master teacher on his personal vision and creativity, then talks about the role of the TDC in creative fields.
(1927–2020)
An American type designer and lettering artist. His hand is behind such well-known typefaces as Tiffany, Bookman, Barcelona and logotypes for The New York Times, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Ford, and others.
Benguiat was integral to the foundation of the International Typeface Corporation (ITC), the first independent licensing company for type designers. He served as vice president of ITC until 1986 and he taught at The School of Visual Arts in New York for nearly 50 years.