Wilhelm August Fleckhaus, a self-made man, started his career as a journalist in the years after WWII. Later he started working in editorial design at Bund Verlag in Cologne. His most important work was the art direction of the magazine Twen (1959–70). It broke new ground in layout and presentation by working with major contrasts in size or colour. He also designed the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin, a supplement of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1963 Fleckhaus designed the ‘rainbow colours’ of a new book series for Edition Suhrkamp, which, according to Die Zeit, created colour ‘in such a grey and overcast world’. He designed exhibitions for Photokina and taught in Essen, Wuppertal and at summer courses in Tuscany. But his desire was always to work on magazines, including Quick, Merian, and Zeit Magazin. Michael Koetzle and Carsten Wolff published the book Fleckhaus: Deutschlands erster Art Director (1997).