Beginning in the mid-1950s, the School of Visual Arts [SVA] was in the vanguard of academic institutions in the U.S. to recognize the need for alternative marketing strategies to attract new students. SVA took to the platforms of New York City’s subway with advertising posters that were both thought-provoking and eye-catching, featuring the work of legendary artists like Ivan Chermayeff, Milton Glaser and George Tscherny.

Screen shot from SVA video by Heller Films

All practicing professionals on the faculty at SVA, they used the poster commission to explore what it means to be an artist and hone their own artistic voice. Like the College itself, the SVA subway posters have become in some way inseparable from the city as incitements to creativity and risk taking.

The current edition, designed by Pablo Delcan, was timed for the back-to-school season and can be seen on platforms city-wide. In the video feature on his work and process, he said, “There’s a long tradition of SVA posters with the message, ‘Art Is…’ so I wanted to continue with that.”  He started out by sketching in the subway and noticed that he rarely reacts to subway posters because there is so much visual overload.

Instead, he wanted to play against the idea of instant legibility. "What if, at first, you find the form and then words within it?" he asks. "People would need a second with it to decode the message.”

Taking for his motif the most basic of drawing tools, the No. 2 pencil, Declan shaped his idea on paper, then digitally worked up the final, seen in the SVA video. 

Right: Art Is by Pablo Delcan, courtesy of SVA

Named one of Forbes' bests artists under 30 in 2017 (their 30 Under 30 series), Pablo Delcan founded Delcan & Company, a design and animation studio based in NYC in 2014. He frequently contributes illustrations to The New York Times, and his work has been awarded and recognized by the Type Directors Club, Art Directors Club & AI-AP. Some of his clients include Esquire, Best Made Company, Google Play, Marni, Atlantic Records, DDB, SolarCity and Penguin Random House, for which he has designed book covers. He has also directed animated music videos.

Underground Images, an touring exhibition of SVA Subway Posters by 33 artists, recently closed in Chiinu, Moldova, after it 34-city tour that began in Slovenia, in June 2013. Info The show is organized by SVA faculty member Mirko Ilic, with Francis Di Tommaso, director, SVA Galleries.

Installation of the globetrotting show of SVA posters at the National Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubijana, Slovenia; courtesy of SVA

Underground Images: School of Visual Arts Subway Posters, 1947 to Present can be seen on Flickr.

Mirko Ilic was born in Bosnia, and worked as an illustrator/designer before moving to New York, where he became the art director of Time magazine’s international edition and later, art director of the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. In 1995, he established Mirko Ilic Corp. His work is in collections of institutions such as the Smithsonian Museum and MoMA, New York. Mirko teaches masters degree illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York as well as organizing shows and lectures on design around the world.