2026.9.3
From the Start of Production to the End.
— How Does an mount Project Manager Get Involved in Making Things?
Progress management, schedule coordination, communicating with the client.When you hear “project manager,” those might be the roles that come to mind first.When we asked Nakahashi, who works as a project manager at mount, “How far does a project manager get involved in making things?” the answer that came back was: “From the start of production to the end — all of it.”So what does that “all of it” actually mean? We asked, drawing on her everyday work and her experience producing the official website for PERFECT DAYS.
Members
Speaker
Shoko Nakahashi
Dir
Contents
1. Making It So the People Who Make Things Can Focus on Making Them
There are three phrases Nakahashi says come back to her, unbidden, in the middle of her work.
“Don’t be a courier.”
Don’t just take a request you’ve received and hand it straight off to someone else. Understand it yourself first — think through “here’s what I think” or “this is worth double-checking” — before passing it along. You create the reason for having a project manager in the middle by adding your own interpretation.
“Being asked is being entrusted.”
It’s something she was taught back when she first joined the company. Even a small task, once you’ve been asked to do it, is a job you’ve been entrusted with — and it deserves to be done carefully. Piling those up builds trust, and that trust brings more work your way.Even with a small task, being asked means being trusted. Returning each one carefully, one at a time, is what builds the trust that follows.
And the third is:
“Looking after the team’s health is a project manager’s job too.”
Of course, one’s health is ultimately each person’s own to manage. But if a project manager draws up an unreasonable schedule, the strain lands on everyone involved. What a project manager is watching isn’t just the schedule chart — it’s who, within that schedule, will end up making things in what condition.
Shoko Nakahashi
What all three have in common, I think, is thinking it through carefully yourself — right down to whether it’s actually realistic.
That way of thinking shows up in her day-to-day progress management too. When messages come pouring in from all directions, or a schedule suddenly slips, she sorts out the state of the schedule and the content, and adjusts things so people can work without unreasonable strain wherever possible. That’s all in service of keeping the burden as light as it can be for everyone involved — the client, the partners, and the team inside mount.
Shoko Nakahashi
I really try to be conscious of creating an environment where everyone can focus on their own work without carrying unnecessary stress.
On another project, she managed the schedule for a large volume of illustration work in fine detail, sending the illustrator frequent reminders about deadlines.
Shoko Nakahashi
I wasn’t the one drawing the illustrations, but I was happy when, after the work was done, they told me it helped to have the schedule broken down into detail and communicated the way it was. It felt like I was taking on, on the illustrator’s behalf, the job of keeping track of the deadlines and the progress of every single piece.
Even in moments where she isn’t directly hands-on herself, she creates the conditions that let the person making the thing stay focused. That, too, is one of a project manager’s jobs in supporting the making of things.
2. When It’s Needed, the Project Manager Gets Hands-On Too
On PERFECT DAYS, the first new project Nakahashi was in charge of after joining mount, she didn’t just manage the schedule as project manager — she also built wireframes and got hands-on with the ambient sound and the type animation.
Shoko Nakahashi
I never imagined that, with the title “project manager,” I’d end up adjusting sound or breaking type apart letter by letter. (Personally, I loved that kind of work, so I was completely absorbed in it.)
The finished site uses 117 ambient sounds. Rather than simply playing on a loop, the sound changes depending on the timing and speed of scrolling, so she built pattern after pattern to make sure it sounded pleasant to the ear under any condition on the website.
For the type animation, she also took part in the work of turning each character’s stroke path into data, using a dedicated tool built to draw every stroke in proper stroke order.
Tools Used During Production
Shoko Nakahashi
There’s more entrusted to you here than what people usually mean by “project manager,” so it can be tough, but there are a lot of moments where you’re actually doing the work, and I think that makes it easy to feel like “I’m making this too.”
Stepping outside the role isn’t the point in itself. If there’s something that would be better done by her, in service of making the thing in front of her better, she reaches for it. As a result, there are moments where a project manager’s job doesn’t stay confined to progress management.
3. Because You’re Involved in “Everything,” You Keep Thinking
Shoko Nakahashi
If you ask how far a project manager goes in making a project — it’s all of it. Especially at mount, I think we’re involved in every single process.
From the start of a project through to its launch and release, all kinds of information flow to the project manager. Who’s doing what. What needs to be decided next. Where the data everyone needs is sitting.
Shoko Nakahashi
I aim to have as full a grasp of the whole project as an art director does, and I think that’s what’s expected of a project manager at mount, too. Because I’m involved in every process, I want to be someone who can answer for the whole thing.
And what making things needs isn’t just hands on deck. Nakahashi says that, at some point, our CEO, Im, once asked her, “Why do you think art directors matter so much?” His answer: “Because they think about it more than anyone else.”
Shoko Nakahashi
I think the most important thing in design is the sheer amount of thought behind it — how far it’s been thought through. Being able to actually put into words why something ended up the way it did is something I think mount especially values.
Think through the information you’ve received before passing it on. Create the conditions that let the people making things stay focused. Get hands-on yourself when it’s needed. And keep thinking about the project from the very beginning to the very end.
What Nakahashi means by “all of it” may not be doing everything alone — it may be treating the making of things as her own job, and never stopping thinking about it.
Not Just Supporting the Work — Being Inside It
Rather than drawing a line at “this far, because I’m the project manager” or “this far, because I’m the designer,” she thinks about what this project needs right now in order to make something better. Setting things up so the people making it can do their best work, stepping into a discussion with an opinion of her own, and sometimes getting hands-on herself — all of it sits on that same continuum.
The point isn’t to stretch the job beyond progress management. It’s staying involved in a single act of making, from start to finish, and continuing to reach toward wherever a hand is needed. Listening to Nakahashi, you get the sense that a project manager at mount is, at the same time, both someone who supports the making of things and someone who is inside it.
* This article used AI to help with the translation.
