Massimo Vignelli vs. Ed Benguiat (sort of)
Here was an opportunity for a lively debate, Garrick said, reminding us that Vignelli has championed the use of no more than six typefaces — per career — whereas Benguiat is one of the most prolific type designers of the 20th century.
Cheerfully agreeing that this was a match made in hell, we invited both men to our offices. They looked placid enough when they arrived one evening in April, but we put that down to good manners. [They may have been placid, but I was a nervous wreck. Vignelli was some minutes late, and I remember calling Lella Vignelli in a panic.] As chief designer of Photo-Lettering Inc., in New York, Benguiat not only creates hundreds of typefaces, but sells or consumes hundreds more. He is a typographic virtuoso (and, not coincidentally, a jazz musician) sensitive to the rhythms and modulations of culture. He wanted to talk about visual expression. Vignelli pays scant attention to cultural trends or self-expressiveness. Never having strayed from the values inculcated by his training as an architect and by his Swiss-born mentors, he approaches type with one idea in mind: its subservience to content and form. His own award-laden career has been built on a reverence for consistency, order, rationality, and harmony. He wanted to talk about visual pollution.
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