Working at the height of mid-20th century American modernist design, Tscherny displayed "an ability to seize the essence of the subject and express it in stunningly simple terms" and to reduce "complex content to an elemental graphic symbol expressing the underlying order or basic form of the subject.

[citation needed] In December 1938, one month after Kristallnacht, Tscherny and his 12-year-old brother escaped illegally into Holland, where they were granted asylum.

[5] Tscherny studied cabinet-making in Holland’s vocational school system while living in various homes for refugee children.

[5] In June 1944, exactly three years after having left, Tscherny landed back in Europe as a soldier in the United States Army, working as a German interpreter in a small prisoner of war compound in Normandy and later with military government in Germany.

Bill, first at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, transferring in the fall of 1947 to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he studied under Herschel Levit and James Brooks.

[3] In 1953, Tscherny joined George Nelson & Associates, a firm in the vanguard of post-war Modernist design.

The Tscherny office designed comprehensive identification programs for United Aircraft, Texasgulf, and W.R. Grace,[3] as well as corporate annual reports for RCA, American Can, Burlington Industries, Colgate Palmolive, General Dynamics, Johnson & Johnson, CPC International, Morgan Stanley, SEI Investments, Uris Buildings, Colonial Penn Group, Mickelberry Corp., and Overseas National Airways.

A wide range of other assignments included the design of a US postage stamp commemorating Alexander Graham Bell and the centennial of the telephone,[3] cigarette packaging for Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co.,[5] and illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post.

Tscherny served two terms (1966–1968) as president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and was a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).