Yuriko is shaped by two cities, two tongues, two time zones, two cups of tea, Green & PG tips.

Ideas don’t just knock on her front door. She greets them from an unexpected angle.

Formerly W+K, Hochkiss & McCann. Now with Dark Horses.

Contact:

yurikoui.london@gmail.com

Working with:

NISSAN, Football Association, Royal Ascot, World Rugby, Great British Racing, MCLAREN, ASICS, UNIQLO, TOYOTA, Starbucks, DAZN, J.League, Travel Portland, Daily Tohoku Newspaper, G.O.A.T PRINTS, Deloitte, & etc.

Honours:

Sports industry Best on Social 2023
Creative Circle UK Gold
Wieden+Kennedy “Next Generation Acceleration Creator Program” 2018
Good Design Award 2017
Monthly Best Advertising 2016 November
Asahi Newspaper Advertising Award 2016
Tohoku Package Design Award 2014
The Six Art Award 2010

Working for:

Dark Horses
Designer London, 2021-Present

Warmup
Designer London, 2019-2021

At Warmup Studio, she worked to enrich the brand’s design language, through visual storytelling. Also it was a time of personal evolution: she taught herself 3D while learning, thanks to her brilliant colleagues, what British humour really is.

When she accidentally said her first swear word in the office, they clapped and said, “Welcome to Warmup!” That moment said everything, about how much she’d grown, and how much she’d found her place.

Freelance
Designer London, 2018-2019

Moved to London in search of creative adventure, and a place to begin. Since arriving, she has worked on design projects and pitches with some of the UK’s leading agencies, including Ogilvy and Single Frame, while also building brand identities directly with clients.

Her work has spanned art direction, visual design, motion graphics, and everything from posters and social media to full branding systems. Along the way, I taught herself the foundations of animation, driven by curiosity.

She also learned that when the sun comes out in London, you stop everything and go outside, no matter what deadline you’re on.

Wieden+Kennedy
Next Generation Acceleration Creator (Art) Tokyo, Japan, 2017-2018

Selected as a Next Generation Acceleration Creator from a competitive global pool. She led design and art direction for integrated campaigns for brands like Starbucks and Travel Portland, projects that gave her a taste of what it means to create at a global scale.

Working at W+K, something clicked. She knew she wasn’t done yet.

After that, without overthinking it, she packed up and flew to London, chasing the feeling that had just begun to grow. It all started with a quirky, slightly risky application a tiny handmade book that earned her the nickname "the little book girl".

Hochkiss
Art Director Tokyo, Japan, 2015-2017

Cut her teeth as an Art Director in Tokyo, working across everything from high-impact campaigns to full brand identities. She helped shape visual communications for global names like UNIQLO, TOYOTA, and J.League, as well as small, passionate local businesses looking to define their own voice.

The work culture? Classic Japan: 3–5 hours of sleep, big ideas, tight deadlines. Somewhere between late night decks and convenience store dinners. It was intense, yes, but also full of momentum, collaboration, and a kind of joy you only get from being all-in. It was a chapter that not only sharpened her craft, but made her fall in love with the creative process even more, and that love is what eventually led her to Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo.

Hochkiss, Junior Art Director 2013-2014
Daily Tohoku Newspaper, Design Lead 2014

One newspaper, one town, one quietly unforgettable project. Alongside other client work, she was temporarily assigned to The Daily Tohoku Newspaper in Aomori, after her creative director noticed she was the only one in the agency who read the paper. What began as a side assignment became something far more meaningful: she led the design and art direction for a new economic supplement called Economic Monday. It won awards, received national press coverage, and, perhaps most meaningfully, continues to be published every Monday to this day.

While in Aomori, she spent her evenings listening to the waves and learning to appreciate local sake and, more importantly, learning from the people behind the newspaper. It became one of those rare projects where professional growth and human connection quietly intertwined.

McCann Erickson Worldwide
Creative Intern Tokyo, Japan, 2013

Where it all began with equal parts gratitude and nerves.

Her very first step into the world of advertising came through a student internship programme, working on real briefs for real clients like Shu Uemura and SHARP. Wide-eyed and full of adrenaline, she collaborated closely with seasoned professionals, learning how creativity and communication come together especially in digital campaigns and interactive experiences.

What a tough woman she is.

Kiyoshi Arase / Managing Director, CEO at The Daily Tohoku Newspaper Inc, 2018

The overall ability of a human being is nurtured in a dimension completely different from the length of one’s life experience. Working with Yuriko made me come to realize such an obvious fact. In her smile shines chivalrously a true strength. What a tough woman she is. Four years ago, in celebration of our 70th anniversary, our company, located in the city of Hachinohe in Aomori prefecture, decided to take on a big project of reforming our newspaper and renewing the brand. The cutting-edge creator who was sent to us, was Yuriko. For the next six months, sleep-depriving, hard-working days continued. Her projects included renewing the typeface of the newspaper title as well as issuing a new media “Economic Monday” which unfolds the world’s economy from a local point of view.

In addition, she took part in the promotion of the newspaper involving a take-over of a supermarket, as well as concepting and producing a sixty-columns-high newspaper wrap. Quite frequently, she would receive multiple emails from the company past midnight, and also had to respond to difficult requests. Despite all the hardships, she showed amazing skills in managing and breaking through. From designing the newspaper to designing the promotion of it, she accomplished perfectly and diligently the design tasks all by herself. In the end, the delivered designs exceeded 120. No shadow was ever casted over her smile which naturally captivated everyone around her.

Economic Monday, of which Yuriko was directly involved in the production as an Art Director and a Designer, won the 2017 Good Design Award. The judges have highly reputed the work as “a one-of-a-kind newspaper with a graphical page design,” and also as “having an infographic-heavy page design that supports the comprehension of the theme.”

The overall process pushed the boundary of what the power of graphics can do to newspaper. However, the biggest gain earned through her continuous battle with a blanket-sized page space was perhaps her confidence in having made the big leap required for her own growth as a creator. Her overall ability as a human being is now shining gloriously more than ever. And of course, she is full of energy as usual.

Hiring Yuriko to join my team was one of the best decisions I have made in my career to-date.

George Steele / Marketing Operation Manager at DiDi, 2022

Hiring Yuriko to join my team was one of the best decisions I have made in my career to-date.

Being the incredibly humble person she is, Yuriko’s CV in 2018 did not give her the credit she deserved for her work and capabilities. In fact, two of my former colleagues who looked at her CV at the time told me not to proceed with her application; I’m glad I ignored that advice.

Not only a fantastic designer, Yuriko has a desire to learn new skills and the motivated mindset required to get her hands dirty and learn them in the field. Yuriko single-handedly brought 3D animation capability to the company we worked for by teaching herself how to master new software. This has since become the company standard and her work has been set as a quality benchmark for all who follow in her footsteps.

More importantly, Yuriko always, without hesitation, prioritised quality over anything else. Whilst deadlines are important, Yuriko consistently insisted on ensuring we had attained the highest level of quality possible before delivering the work, even if that meant playing with deadlines from time to time.

Not once did I ever regret giving Yuriko “a little more time” to complete something she was working on. Not once.

Even after I left the company we both worked for, we stayed in touch and I even reached out to Yuriko later on to help me with the creative work of one of my personal businesses.

I cannot speak highly enough of Yuriko’s abilities as a designer, and qualities as a person, and would be delighted to have the opportunity to work with her again in the future.

Exerting a bottomless power.

Katuo Mizuguchi / ECD at Hochkiss Inc, 2018

Having an older brother and two older sisters, Yuriko is the youngest of four siblings. Two of them are doctors, but her brother has worked at a “male companion club” during his college years, and one of her sisters is a professional pole dancer. It is without a doubt that her upbringing in such an interesting environment has had an influence over the formation of her character. Her calm and quiet gaze that examines her surrounding, her ability to insist herself when necessary, and the ability to carry herself through — using these abilities as her strength, she has chosen a path to “creativity” which is completely different from the paths her family has taken.

When I had the opportunity of working with her as an Art Director and a Designer in creating “Economic Monday” for the Daily Tohoku newspaper, her character helped in reforming the environment of the project entirely.

The mission from the CEO to reform the newspaper in celebration of their 70th anniversary was quite clear, but there were mountains of challenges, including the suspicious eyes of the local reporters to an unknown creator from Tokyo, the difficulty of working together with the in-house designers of the newspaper company, and many more. Even then, Yuriko persistently solved and overcame each challenge, and as a form of sublimation she succeeded in creating a new page space that mainly focused on using infographics. Furthermore, it is certainly by the gift of her aforementioned character that she was able to bring to life a promotion project that utilized a local supermarket as a media.

Do not be fooled by her petite size. This woman by the name of Yuriko — she can exert a bottomless power.

Capturing the vector of intention.

Masakazu Taniyama / CEO, ECD at Taniyama Adverts Inc, 2018

Copy is not a short sentence, but a “vector of intention” that signifies the direction to which a company or a product is heading. The capacity of an Art Director greatly differs depending on whether or not his or her design is created with the understanding of this concept.

Her works clearly show how she understands the very essence of this concept. She is the kind of creator admired by copywriters. 

From an Executive Creative Director and Copywriter’s standpoint, I give my hearty recommendation to her with confidence.