The ‘father of Hong Kong design’ Henry Steiner on creating the HSBC logo, Standard Chartered banknotes

Henry Steiner, who arrived in Hong Kong on a nine-month contract and never left, says he was the first person in the city to call himself a graphic designer

Steiner with one of his designs, in 2015. Photo: May Tse

Ticket to America: I was born in Vienna, in 1934. My father was a dentist, my mother was a seamstress, and we lived in Baden bei Wien, a spa town southwest of Vienna. I had a pleasant enough early childhood, but in 1938 came the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

My mother was very concerned and started searching desperately for a way to get us out of Austria. She heard about an American-Austrian Hollywood film producer who summered in Baden and knocked on his door and said she wanted an affidavit from him to go to the States. He said he’d received many similar requests. She pulled out a picture of me and said, “If not for me, then for my son.” He said, “How can I refuse this little Chinese boy?”

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