Yuko is an award winning Japanese illustrator based in New York.

You may have seen her style gracing Pepsi cans, Gap and NIKE T-shirts, VISA billboards, Microsoft and Target ads, as well as covers of DC Comics and inside the pages of New York Times, TIME, New Yorker, GQ and Esquire. But illustration is actually her second career, after studying marketing and advertising in a university in Japan, Yuko got a position in corporate PR in Tokyo – a job she kept for 11 years. After having an early midlife crisis, she made up her mind to pursue her childhood dream of becoming an artist, and moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts in 1999. She received MFA in illustration in 2003 and has been illustrating ever since.

When not in her studio, she teaches the next generation of artists at her alma mater. In 2009, Newsweek Japan chose Yuko as one of the “100 Japanese People The World Respects”.