mount inc. in 2025

The eeriness given off by rapidly evolving AI and technology — and yet, a morbid curiosity that makes you peer in despite yourself…
Photographer Yusuke Nishibe captured this crossing of emotions in vivid, beautiful, magnetic photographs.

For the background direction, I drew inspiration from the works and gave form to textures and movement. “Eerie but cool, but still eerie” — the word “creepy-cool-creepy” was at the core of the expression. The direction is expressed using fragment shaders. Using noise and ray marching, I built visuals with a cellular, corporeal texture.

It was Kusama-san’s own wish that, while the exhibition took a dialogue form, she didn’t want it centered on herself — because she regards every other artist as a rival.
Discussing that raw, stinging sensation with photographer Uemura-san, we captured it as sparks and flashes running between the artists and expressed it in photographs. For the flashes, Uemura-san held a light in the venue and swung it between the works as he shot. Thank you so much, Uemura-san, for your tenacious cooperation in crafting the images.

It was a project where, together with Uemura-san, we obsessed over how to express in photographs the dialogue between Kusama-san and the artists through their works.
Although I’d grasped in advance how it would be expressed, I was moved when I actually saw the data after the shoot.
And I was moved again when the photos were reflected on the site. I think the power of Uemura-san’s photography drew out the exhibition’s appeal!
(Yamasaki, wielding both PM and design, was amazing too…)

Taking on even the formulation of the philosophy was especially hard. It was an area I had little experience in, and since it was a crucial step in shaping the company’s “personality,” there was tension.
With “unchanging change” as the design theme, I expressed universality through layout and change through motion. I think this was even harder for Suta than for me.

The page-transition direction is a part I tuned to the very last and poured energy into. When you view the site normally, the transition is just an instant, but to give a startling surprise in that instant, I poured my heart into synchronizing DOM elements with WebGL 3D, camerawork, pixel-by-pixel texture expression, and more.

At the time of the Mishima Incident (the day Yukio Mishima died), the curator Iida-san was apparently a middle-schooler. In an interview I heard the words of the teachers back then and the feelings he’s carried since. Sensing that Iida-san’s holding an exhibition for Mishima’s 100th anniversary carried extraordinary feeling, I agonized over how I could convey that emotion on the site just as it was (far too hard). And then writer Muraoka-san wove it into text with real force. Muraoka-san is amazing. I became a fan at once.

Implementing a different layout pattern for each artist was quite a grueling task. Since I don’t think I’ll get many chances to implement this kind of editorial design, it was a design that made implementers weep — but I could tackle it while enjoying myself.

Proposing “paper-likeness” to the Misawa Lab, professionals in handling paper, was pressure — but we also received many suggestions only they could give (the unruliness of paper, the rustling feel, and so on).
Implementing while looking at and touching paper samples is a good memory, too.

The words that appear when the paper moves — “jiri-jiri,” “hyuru-hyuru,” “suu,” “po-po-po,” and so on — were developed by the Misawa Lab,
reflecting them into the web in real time through a tool Okabe made.
Having the words (onomatopoeia) makes it feel richer.
Through the layering of paper and the onomatopoeia, it comes to look like all sorts of things — “snow falling silently,” “a summer sun,” “a big tropical fish seen from a tank” — a fun site.

Since it was signage of an unprecedented size — 40m wide, 4m tall — the biggest wall was not being able to imagine the experience. Our current office happens to have a white-walled space with nothing around it, so we projected with a projector and partially simulated to verify the experience. It was a routine of making it, projecting on the wall, and revising. (The high-brightness projector lying dormant at home came in handy.)

Unlike the websites we usually make, CM and signage footage is an ad medium that leaps into your eyes without any action needed to view it, so I proceeded while agonizing over how to leave an impression at a glance — or conversely, how to keep it watchable. I fine-tuned the timing of the “ta-da” over and over, subtly changing when it appears depending on whether there’s music. I edited more than 20 videos alone, so it was quite touch-and-go, but the project members helped me greatly. I especially owe PM Nakahashi… (Nakahashi’s handmade delivery map was my lifeline.)

I’d like to say “I was so absorbed I don’t remember,” but looking at the versions of the planning documents, it seems I did a lot of trial and error.
Some of them chickened out and tried to settle on something safe, or let my own convenience show through…
Each time, CD Im and Takasaki-san and the others pulled me back up..

A room where you make things silently, single-mindedly at a desk; a space where pleasant light streams in and shadows fall…
That much was decided from early on.
The final expression is the result of advice and ideas from Takasaki-san and Im-san, and of
Okabe-san’s ceaseless obsession, passion, and competitive drive — his battle with pressure.

As we worked out the structure, we reviewed it in-house again and again, and the feeling of “correct but dull” remained as an unresolved issue right to the end. As I kept thinking about conveying KOKUYO’s true form — not just a stationery company, its scope steadily widening — I inevitably got fixated on “explaining correctly” and it turned into a formulaic, run-of-the-mill explanation; my head had gone stiff. But surely the people at KOKUYO make things more joyfully and lightly. By adding a manner of speaking and a personality, we found an editorial direction that made it feel like a self-introduction with that company’s character.
Working on that site structure and design while also making the planning documents for KOKUYO’s 4th Medium-Term Plan — late 2024 to early 2025 was the toughest, as I recall!

This site’s design was made by piling up many rejected drafts for each page. Through repeated trial and error, we reached a form we could feel was “the clearest.” For the special content, to align the whole team’s mental image, we built a shared understanding using After Effects videos and Blender 3D videos. Even the flat, non-3D illustrations were finely adjusted to blend naturally with the three-dimensional movement and pop out excitingly. Two days before launch, we found something that didn’t move at all on the smartphones of members other than those in charge. Fixing it to work in one day was, I think, a miracle.

The number of people involved was of course large, but I want people to know the length and depth of the time we spent in conversation with everyone. Every day, discussions repeated, and — with it not being a matter of a single category — the fear of being chased daily by “we have to organize this and land it in the best possible form” was extraordinary, I think now that I can see it objectively. At the same time, the power of the client who shared those days with us was tremendously important, and it’s carved deeply into me that I can never thank them enough. The dense memory of pushing to the limit right up to launch covers everything, but from kickoff day to October 2 there wasn’t a single moment to take a deep breath. You may wonder what “doing it the earthy way” means, but there’s nothing to it but simply enduring. Working with Yonemichi-san, I always brush up against a pure madness — it’s truly incredible. It frustrates me that I can only put it in those words. What lies at the root of mount’s inner workings, I think, is endurance.

The website and video planning started before the exhibition content was fixed. Accompanying Yuri Nomura-san on her interviews, the mount team recorded what she felt from her encounters with people and places, and how she brought it to fruition as an exhibition.
For contact, confirmation, and coordination with everyone, we cherished dialogue as careful as possible. Rather than valuing only efficiency, we layered on communication — using tools as appropriate — so people could feel reassured and convinced.
“How we relate to the land and to nature” has long been in my heart as a personal theme too, so I’m happy I could be involved in this exhibition at the end.

As I touched the feelings toward rice received from the exhibition, the air of the rice paddies, and the gaze of the people who live there, I came to want to depict rice more delicately, preciously, carefully. To gently settle that feeling into the page, I hid the texture of soil in the background and the kanji for rice and the shape of rice plants in the accents. I aimed for a quiet lingering resonance — so that even with a small motif, the moment it catches your eye, you’d feel “ah, there’s rice here too.”

A story from when we went to inspect the factory and such in Seki, Gifu. In the car on the way, I talked passionately with Otsuka-san of the design department about Jaguar’s (the car) new branding and product design.
I thought, “they really do love design” — and at the same time, the feeling of “I want to make something good” welled up in me. That was the behind-the-scenes.

Actually, right up to the launch we kept remaking all sorts of things — direction, copy, layout. “Isn’t this way better after all?” “This might make it even better!” and so on. I’m truly grateful to the project members who ran through to the end with me. What helped in the midst of it was the following copy that appears on the top page (laughs): “See — you can still do better.”

It was the first job I got to be involved in after joining, and for me also the first time seeing the site-production floor. Everything, from one to ten, was learning, and I desperately kept up, poring over every sentence and word of the emails and messages. The refined organization and placement of information all had meaning and purpose, and I was deeply moved by the process of something obsessed over down to the details coming together into one form.

On the first project I was involved in after joining, my heart grew warm at getting to work with people I’d long respected. I learned firsthand that there’s a clear intention behind everything — the care in cropping the works, the refined organization and placement of information. I want to recall this precious experience from time to time and keep moving forward.