Who was Eiko Ishioka and what are the designs that made her famous? 

Eiko Ishioka was a Japanese designer, famous for her outlandish and surreal designs which gave her global renown despite having to make her name in male-dominated Japan.

Ishioka, who died in 2012, is famous for designs in many adverts, famous films, albums covers and the Beijing Olympics.

On Wednesday, which would have been her 79th birthday, Google has honoured her with a commemorative Doodle on its homepage.

, a 2006 adventure fantasy film directed by Tarsem Singh, who she worked with often throughout her career.

Eiko Ishioka was born in Tokyo on July 12, 1938. Her father, a graphic designer himself, had initially encouraged her artistic ambitions but when she said she wanted to pursue her own career in the field he warned that she would struggle in a male-dominated culture.

Luckily, she ignored this advice, and worked her way into the industry via the cosmetics company Shiseido. Her big break came when working for the Japanese department store Parco, where she became famous for adverts that seemingly bore little relation to the company.

Her most famous, a 90-second advert, featured the actress Faye Dunaway wearing black and eating a hard-boiled egg while staring at the camera. The letters P-A-R-C-O then played across the screen at the end.

Gradually, Ishioka branched out into many different walks of life - costume designing and art directing among them.

One of her most famous contributions was the costume designs that featured in Bram Stoker\'s

, the 1992 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

They include this heavy dress worn by Sadie Frost, whose collar designed to mirror a lizard\'s neck.

Ishioka won a Grammy award for this album cover, the 1986 record Tutu by the jazz musician Miles Davis. The image is dominated by a black and white close-up of his face, with the middle heavily lit. It was photographed by Irving Penn.

In later life, one of her most memorable contributions was as director of costume design for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

The nine-part ceremony which focused on Chinese history featured 15,000 performers and reportedly cost more than $100m (£78m) to produce.

In 2011, just a year before her death, Ishioka married Nico Soultanakis, a director who she knew through her professional life, including work on

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