Hans Schleger (born Hans Leo Degenhard Schlesinger; 29 December 1898 – 18 September 1976) was a German-Polish-Jewish and later British graphic designer.
Early life
He was born in Kempen in Posen, Prussia (in modern-day Poland) on 9 December 1898 to Jewish parents. His family relocated to
Berlin when he was six. At the age of 20, he changed his surname to Schleger, and attended the Kunstgewerbeschule (from 1918 to 1921), studying under painter
Emil Orlik. He began his career in Berlin, working for
John Hagenbeck as a film set designer, and also designed the firm's logo. In 1924 he moved to New York City to work in the publishing and advertising industry, initially as a freelance designer, illustrator, and magazine layout artist, and later as an art director;
he began using the pseudonym
'Zéró' in 1926, when he founded his own firm on
Madison Avenue,
and would continue to use the name for the rest of his career. After three years in New York he moved back to Germany to work for the
Berlin branch of W.S. Crawford, an English advertising firm.
Career in England
In 1932, he moved to England, continuing to work for Crawford's. He became an integral part of
London's early 1930s avant-garde design community, and helped spread the aesthetics and philosophy of modernism in Britain.
Among his most well known work is the London Transport
London bus sign, which was commissioned in 1935 by
Frank Pick, and is still in use today, largely unchanged from the original.
In 1939 he became a naturalized British citizen, and during World War II designed posters for the
War Office and Ministry for Food, and for the London Passenger Transport Board, including posters for the Dig for Victory campaign.
His work was included in the Britain Can Make It exhibition held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 1946.
In the post-war period he worked with the agency Mather & Crowther, before founding his own firm, Hans Schleger & Associates, in 1953. He created corporate identities, posters, and campaigns for companies such as Penguin Group,
He married Patricia Maycock (later known as Pat Schleger), also a graphic designer, in 1956, forming a husband and wife creative partnership.
He taught and guest lectured at Chelsea Polytechnic, Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, and the Regional College of Art in Manchester; he also spent a year in Chicago as a visiting professor at the Institute of Design, which had been founded by László Moholy-Nagy as the "New Bauhaus" together with artists and designers from the Bauhaus who had left Germany at a similar time to Schleger.
In 1959, Schleger was named a Royal Designer for Industry.
