George Tscherny at 95
Designer extraordinaire and one-man-band George Tscherny is 95.

Designer extraordinaire and one-man-band George Tscherny is 95.
MoMA’s 1956 exhibition of posters for the Family Service Association featured the work of George Tscherny, among other artists and designers.
The tension between the accidental and the controlled is almost always present in the work of George Tscherny.
SVA’s early subway posters helped raise the school to a new plane of artistic and intellectual pursuits.
One of George Tscherny’s graphic hobbyhorses was the jumbled appearance of type on an undulating surface.
George Tscherny’s 1967 company profile for lingerie-maker Barbizon.
George Tscherny developed his style working for Herman Miller in the mid-50s.
Liggett & Myers’ Designer Packs designed by George Tscherny.
Cigarette companies were always big into advertising (perhaps because their products were largely indistinguishable), but after their marketing practices became widely seen as particularly nefarious their presence in the field faded.
We’re continuing to receive great stuff from George Tscherny, and here’s the latest.
This detail for a 1956 poster for the Cartoonist & Illustrators School by George Tscherny. Rebranded as the School of Visual Arts later that year, the designer had a long and fruitful relationship with the institution.
George Tscherny designed this installation for Pan American Airways, to be sent to travel agencies promoting their vacation locations. Details about the modular system follow.
The most recent addition to the Chermayeff & Geismar Collection is twelve boxes of old and rare art books, ranging from annuals to architecture; Switzerland to Japan. As always, there were plenty of surprises: one was the catalog for an AGI exhibition from 1976, which featured, alongside reproductions of their work, dramatic photos of the designers.
In 1995, the Cooper Union celebrated the 40th anniversary of Pushpin Studios with an exhibition and special sale of drawings and paintings by the three founders, pictured above: Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel, and Milton Glaser; along with works by John Alcorn, Sam Antupit, Michael Aron, Vincent Ceci, Paul Davis, George Leavitt, Tim Lewis, Jim McMullan, Reynold Ruffins, Jerold Smokler, Richard Mantel, “and others.” This reminded me of another similar device that captured a group that is also heavily represented by the Archive.
We’ve just received the first installment of our new George Tscherny Collection, which includes gorgeous modular displays for Pan Am terminals, corporate style manuals, and branded promo items and service uniforms.
Another great example of SVA’s forms from the early George Tscherny identity system. Its almost stuffily balanced width is softened a tiny bit by the lowercase “application.” Love the setting of the serif type and the letter-spaced gothic below. We need to get a vitrine for this whole system (see also: 1 and 2).
In the late-1950s Seventeen magazine was a clearing house for an incredible stable of graphic talent. Among the contributors were many artists and designers associated with the School of Visual Arts, including Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse and others like Rudolf de Harak.
More from George Tscherny: his design on the poster for the U.S. exhibition at the troubled Milan Triennale of 1968. In those days, the event served as a major convergence point for conversation and debate within the design community.
We have written on Tscherny’s artwork and modular displays for Pan Am. And now we’ve also uploaded more of C&G’s posters in the series (in our Flickr).
We’ve just received our next batch of materials from George Tscherny: a wonderful case study of his identity work for W.R. Grace. Video after the jump!