He recognized from an early age the way that high art and commercial art overlapped, blended together and even nestled inside each other.
I called myself a space salesman when I worked in newspaper advertising. When I was made ad manager, I “dummied” each day’s newspaper, which meant placing all the ads sold for the next edition, after which the editor could count up the column inches left over which he could fill with something to read which wasn’t an advertisement. That was then; the internet is now.
The digital titans have long since harvested our personal details. They can rifle advertising instead of shotgunning it like in the old days. They know what foods make me gassy and which cheek I shave first; they know when your period starts. They can micro-purvey amenable product for every susceptibility, disposition and failing of yours, mine, his, hers and theirs. Never mind that it’s deeply creepy.
But that’s an aside. I came here to admire a man I met in his obituary. George Tscherny (pronounced CHAIR-nee), who died in late 2023, created the logo for the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
It’s a squiggly flower “positioned next to the school’s name, written in what [Tscherny] called the ‘icy perfection’ of the elegantly formal Bodoni typeface…” Bodoni was the default typeface for the ads we laid out at the newspaper, so I registered its mention with affection. (The newspaper taught me to use no more than a couple of typefaces in an ad; to avoid script fonts like the plague; and to convince local merchants that white space was their friend.)
When Tscherny went to work there in 1955, the SVA was still called the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (with no apostrophes!). Why couldn’t it keep that name? “School of Visual Arts” has neither originality nor distinction.
“I see myself as a bridge between commerce and art,” Mr. Tscherny said in an interview for the Art Directors Club in 1997, when the club inducted him into its Hall of Fame. “For just as copy can be literature, design can be art when it reaches certain levels of originality and distinction.”
(Clay Risen, “George Tscherny, Whose Graphic Designs Defined an Era, Is Dead at 99,” New York Times, 11-17-23)
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
I probably wouldn’t have gone to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School as a photography and fine arts major, but I received a wonderful education from SVA including recent cartooning and illustration courses.
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Lovely to know that you are a graduate. You make a good point. I tossed off my remark somewhat flippantly. The old name was picturesque but specific! I have great respect for this institution. Thanks for noticing my post and commenting.
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What a lovely post Jim – I trained as a typographer/graphic designer in London in the 1970s and hand-rendered fonts using very expensive Letraset for a final product. It couldn’t be more different now! Thank you! Sue
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Wow! What a fascinating background you have, Sue. Thank you for that detail. I have a long fixation on the “painted word.” I’m surfacing clippings I’ve had for months in my notes, and delighted when their topic resonates with others, too. Greetings and regards. — Jim
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