Henry Steiner

Even if you think you don’t know Henry Steiner, if you live in Hong Kong, you know his work. The nonagenarian is known as the “father of Hong Kong design”: he is responsible for the HSBC hexagon, the Hong Kong Land “H”, the Jockey Club logo and the emblem on Standard Chartered banknotes, among other everyday sights.

The Vienna-born designer, who lived in the United States and studied at Yale University under the esteemed designer Paul Rand, moved to Hong Kong in 1961, and established his consultancy, Steiner&Co, in 1964. To celebrate his six decades of work in the city, visual art museum M+ hosted Henry Steiner: The Art of Graphic Communication, a retrospective of his work, in 2024, demonstrating the development of not only Steiner’s style and confidence but also the significance of graphic design in Hong Kong’s visual culture.