A student at SVA will typically encounter dozens of different faculty members during their time at the College. Needless to say, some courses and instructors will have a bigger impact than others, but every so often a student will take a class and make a connection with a faculty member whose influence will last well after the final grades have been handed out.

One of the courses Debbie Hart (BFA 1981 Graphic Design) enrolled in during her last year at the College was Lettering and Typography, taught by veteran typographer Ed Benguiat. “One of my best friends had recommended the class,” says Hart. “She thought it was great and that he was a great teacher.”

When Hart speaks about the class now, 30 years later, there is still an edge of excitement in her voice. “He had such a love of lettering, and there were all of these typefaces he’d designed. It was like learning how to draw or sculpt from Michelangelo,” she says. (Benguiat is the creator of more than 600 fonts and typefaces, including Bookman, Tiffany, Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic.) After a career as a graphic designer in New York and Los Angeles, Hart is now an art educator in West Virginia and runs a freelance calligraphy business out of her home. She cites that one course with Benguiat as an important influence on her career, which has included doing lettering work for Hallmark Cards. She still keeps up a regular correspondence with him as both friend and mentor.

“I think it’s the responsibility of a teacher to be a teacher forever and ever,” says Benguiat, who makes a point of staying in touch with former students and taking an ongoing interest in their professional work. “Never lose track of a student, otherwise you’re not really an instructor,” he says, likening his situation to that of a surgeon who tracks the welfare of a patient long after he or she has left the hospital. “She was a great student,” he says of Hart. “She had a very sensitive attitude toward typography. Like having an ear for music, her eye was very much in touch with space, forms and shaping.”

Her “great eye” for typography got finely tuned in the Lettering and Typography course, and Benguiat moved beyond being just a teacher. “I am the type of person who craves a mentor—someone I can go to and follow under their wing,” she says. “Ed has been and still is one of those people.” As Hart moved into working in entertainment-industry advertising, she was easily able to master the specific protocols for typography in Hollywood movie promotion, and she sees Benguiat’s guidance as an important factor in that and many other stages of her career. “He always has good advice, and always encourages me, no matter where I am in my life,” she says.

While Benguiat is an in-demand typographical designer, he continues to teach in the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department at SVA—something he has done continually for 40 years. “You owe back,” he says of his ongoing desire to teach. “When you’re employed in an industry, it’s a responsibility to pass on to others what you have. Otherwise, how is the next generation going to know where to go?” As students sit down in his fall 2010 semester Typeface Design course, Benguiat stands ready to train more deft hands and open minds like Debbie Hart’s, and he will continue to be an influence on them long after the last day of class.