Shigeo Fukuda (1932-2009) was a sculptor, graphic artist and poster designer who created optical illusions. His art pieces usually portray deception, such as Lunch With a Helmet On, a sculpture created entirely from forks, knives, and spoons, that casts a detailed shadow of a motorcycle. His home outside Tokyo featured a 1.2 m front door that would appear far away from someone approaching the house. This door was a visual trick, with the actual entrance to the house being an unornamented white door designed to blend in seamlessly with the walls of the house.

The New York Times described how Fukuda’s posters “distilled complex concepts into compelling images of logo-simplicity”. In 1987, Fukuda was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in New York City, which described him as “Japan’s consummate visual communicator”. The Art Directors Club noted the “bitingly satirical commentary on the senselessness of war” shown in “Victory 1945″ (above), which won him the grand prize at the 1975 Warsaw Poster Contest, a competition whose proceeds went to the Peace Fund Movement.