He wanted to draw nudes like some of the well-known illustrators. While playing on the “street”, Ed enrolled at the Workshop School of Advertising Art. He compares graphic design and typography to the rhythm and balance of a musical composition. After his stint in the Air Corps he traded his airplane control stick for drumsticks and continued the jazz percussionist career he had started before the war.Įd became established as a talented progressive jazz musician under the name Eddie Benart, and played with numerous big bands of that era, but preferred the New York gigs, playing with Bop groups on New York’s 52nd (Jazz) Street: “It kept me in town going on the road with big bands was a drag, and tough.” During that time, a Metronome and Downbeat magazine poll picked Ed as the number three sideman/drummer in America.Īlmost forty years ago Silas Rhodes, President and founder of the School of Visual Arts, gave Ed a job as a teacher.
Ed would play with his father’s pens, brushes, and drafting sets, and learned about sign painting, showcard and speedball lettering.ĭuring World War II, he wasn’t old enough to enter the armed service, so with a forged photostat of his birth certificate, he enlisted in the army. His dad was display director of a large NY department store and had all the drawing tools a little boy could want. Born in Brooklyn, NYC, Edward Benguiat got acquainted with design and showcard lettering when he was nine years old.
