The Fukuda Cube
As part of a course I’m taking at the NYC School of Visual Arts, instructor Richard Mehl introduced me to Japanese designer Shigeo Fukuda. Fukuda was expert at communicating messages using minimal graphic means. His spare style was universal, his symbolism bridging cultural divides. He was a popular figure among American designers. His book “Visual Illusion” was a virtual textbook for designers in the United States. Many of his best-known designs are visual puns that evoke double readings.
Mehl gave us an assignment which stumped me a little bit. It was to construct something called a Fukuda Cube. Unlike other assignments in the class, it didn’t involve designing in Fukuda’s style. Instead, we were asked to do an assignment that Mehl himself had done when he was briefly taught by Fukuda as a student. Here are the very basic instructions:
Mehl himself says “this assignment is definitely the oddball in the group. The final product is not a conventional graphic design product, like a poster or title sequence. When Fukuda gave me and my classmates this assignment, I was definitely more than a bit confused. How do I apply this assignment to my graphic design practice? I think Fukuda wanted us to forget about graphic design and just be creative. He wanted us to be playful, experimental—to approach the assignment without preconceptions. And I think this is why Professor [Paul] Rand introduced us to Fukuda. He knew it would take an assignment like this to disrupt our preconceptions about graphic design.”
And so, with that, I completed this unusual little project. It forced me to use physical materials and break away from the antiseptic perfection of the computer for a change.