A renewal for the first time in nearly 10 years: “opportunity” for our young members, “words” for mount

Could you tell us again what prompted the renewal?

Broadly speaking, it was to create “opportunity.”
To start with the practical side, I still think it’s a tool for “winning new work and acquiring new talent.” But since that’s necessary for any company or organization, when I asked “what are we doing it for,” I’d say we resolved to renew it in order to create opportunity.

Right now we have 16 people, including me. For five or six years I’ve wanted to grow to 20, though I still haven’t managed it…
Even so, the young ones are growing and producing results. Looking back over the portfolio and watching them grow, I really do want to give them new opportunities and new fields — and I hear voices from them, too, here and there, saying “I want to take on a new field.”
In that sense, I felt we had to make the “effort to convey” who we are in our own words. That, for me, is the phrase that carries the most meaning.
Beyond that, honestly, too much time had simply passed. A renewal this large is the first in about nine years, isn’t it?

That’s right. The last big renewal was at our 9th anniversary, so this comes at our full 18th anniversary (our 19th year).

Until now, we hadn’t said much about ourselves on our own website. The reason I now feel the need is that if we’re taken to be a “web production house,” it narrows our scope.
We’ve actually never called ourselves a “web production company” — we’ve always held the view that the website is just one means of solving a problem, and not the only one. That said, do we have the caliber or experience of the big design firms out there, or the people who lead branding? Not quite. If we exist somewhere in between, I felt we had to put that into words and convey it.

Looking back, we’ve always done things like properly putting into words — and visualizing — what lies at the core of a company or brand, the things that should be conveyed but haven’t been articulated. In plain terms, it’s something like “branding.”
But I didn’t want to lean on that vague word “branding,” so I felt it was time to state clearly what we had left unspoken. And by stating it ourselves, I think we become more conscious of it. I’d be glad if it could become a starting point for a new field and for growth.

If there’s a part of the site you most want people to see, or a page you were particular about, please tell us.

What we used to state concisely in our own words on a single “About” page, this time we’ve split into three — “About Us,” “Services” and “Our Approach” — putting into words our “stance” toward work and our “method” for carrying it out.

In particular, there’s the “About Us” page — I’d be glad if people started there, so that potential clients and job seekers can understand with what feelings and what attitude we work.
And deliberately, on the page that explains things using the words “Services” we’ve articulated our way of working: “Creative Produce,” “Brand Strategy,” and “Production” — the making part — plus “Advisory,” a relationship of continuous consulting and advice.
We used to give the same explanation to people we met in person, but by declaring it before we even meet, I think people will understand us better.

The portfolio, too, is compiled in a slightly meatier form than before, as case studies, so those who want to know more about a project may deepen their understanding. And we’ve made sure our members’ faces are clearly visible as well.

Eventually you want to build and run a Magazine page too, right?

Yes — I’d like us to share things actively through a Magazine, too.

In facing the renewal of our own site, did you come to think or realize anything anew? In developing the words this time, you interviewed yourself and five managers. Did something emerge from that?

I no longer think of mount as my company — I think of it as belonging to everyone here. I’m consciously acting so that it can become that. And, presumptuous as it may sound, I think makers who work the way we do are a rare thing even in Japan, so I feel anew that I want to “protect” something like our culture.


I’ve always held strongly to the idea of making good things, and I’ve been very conscious of building an environment for making good things. In the sense of “maintaining” that environment, what’s most needed is a maker’s pride.
I think each mount member holds something close to “this is how making, design, and work ought to be.” None of us is a superman, nor the type to think something up in a flash and just make it — we don’t work in a polished way; it’s more earthy, if anything.

Seen that way, our abilities aren’t that high, yet we can put products out into the world with this much confidence — and that’s because, as I said, each person has a kind of pride and stubbornness, an awareness of “this one thing I won’t compromise on.” This place (mount) is where that gets embodied, I think.
Rather than a fresh realization — it’s something I was aware of and have been doing all along — the hardest thing, I feel, is “maintaining that central core without losing it.” To maintain, in other words, is to change. To keep the core unchanged, we ourselves need to change.

We’ll soon enter our 19th year.
I’ll be in my fifties, the staff will age in turn, and new generations will join. Even as the generations turn over like that, I want what we’ve cherished to be handed down without breaking. I hope this website can be a solid foothold for that.

In this transitional moment, how exactly are you trying to evolve and change things?

Actually, our method hasn’t changed much.
I tell it to myself, and to the managers, and of course to the executives: the most important thing is “people.”
In the end, by growing — myself included — we can make better things and sustain them. And when I think about how people grow, there’s the type who grows on their own. You can just leave them be. But if you want that growth to be a little more rapid rather than gradual, what’s needed is an “environment” with standards far beyond your own, and an “opportunity” beyond what you think you can do.

What I keep in mind day to day is drawing out “a little beyond the maximum” of the abilities held by Yonemichi and Okabe in their forties, and especially the younger members.
For that, their own “I’ll do it” spirit has to be the base. It’s a big hurdle, but creating a situation that makes them confront it is really important. Even if they’re about to stumble, you back them up, rally them, somehow get them to the goal, and let them build a “success experience.”
That’s exactly why I think we need to choose the work we let them experience.

Whether intermittently or continuously, whether we can build an environment where they can keep taking on challenges is my role. Working with the sense of mission to grow our young members no matter what is a belief that hasn’t changed for me, and won’t change.

So, precisely to increase those opportunities, you made it a website that “speaks.”

Everyone who makes things — not only at mount — is pushed to the edge day after day, struggling to climb over walls on their own.
There must be moments that are hard to get past. When an employee is discouraged or seems unable to overcome something, what should be done?

Well, it’s by every means available — you can’t name just one. Encouraging them, of course; sometimes letting them rest; and in my case, sometimes getting really angry.

Especially the young ones find it hard because they can’t see the answer. But neither the managers nor I can see the goal either. That’s why this work is so grueling — and, conversely, why it’s interesting. You don’t know the right answer; you can’t see it. And it’s fine to fail — you just try again next time.
I say this to everyone now and then: take the relationship between a trainer and the person training. There’s always a limit. And when it comes to who decides that limit — well, we’re soft on ourselves, so we stop — but whether or not someone is beside you suggesting “you’ve got a bit more in you, come on” makes all the difference.
At that point, the person receiving the “suggestion,” or the “vantage point,” should trust the one giving it: “if this person says so, it must be right; I’m not fully convinced and don’t quite get it, but I’ll give it a go.”

Also, it’s important for the one teaching or guiding to hold a “believing heart” toward the staff. Entrusting work to others isn’t so easy — all the more so when you’re at the peak of your own abilities. But unless you believe, having entrusted it, that whatever feedback you give they will rise to meet it, the relationship doesn’t hold. Trusting each other matters.　

So, what kind of company is mount, really?

We use the words “Design Practice” on the site. It’s not a very familiar term in Japan. At first I thought maybe we should call ourselves a “creative agency,” but it felt slightly off, and while searching around I came across “design practice.”

In the sense of the word we usually know, it means something like “training” or “practice,” but it seems the word “design practice” exists as an alternative to “design studio.” It carries less the sense of working on whatever you’re handed, and more an “attitude” or “principle” of facing the design — the making — that you yourself pursue.
Holding that, I want to use it in the sense of a group that carries out design in order to truly realize those things.

Even to make a single thing, the way we build up the client’s words first — empathizing, committing, making it our own — is partly because we don’t want to make something meaningless. We’re paid to make it, so there’s a social responsibility. I strongly want to build on something that holds together logically.
Either way, it may sound like splitting hairs. Even if it’s called mere logic, we want to hold it dear. When we send what we’ve made out into the world, that logic matters to us — so that we can be sure it takes a form that truly reaches people.

I’m curious whether mount has any outlook, goals, or something like dreams for the future.

To repeat myself, the most important thing really is people.
Also, meeting people.

By “people,” for me, I mean the staff. Their growth is, above all, what matters most to mount. Growth requires opportunity, so first we want to dispel the image of a mere web production company, expand our field — including so-called branding — while producing results, and be a nimbler group.
Even as we expand our fields, I want us to keep being a group that perseveres in the craft of making.

To take an extreme case — say, ten years from now, if the fundamental spirit stayed the same but you’d become a group that no longer makes websites, would that be all right with you?

For me, the field can be anything. Our strength, the work of “making websites,” has an aspect that’s very much a microcosm of every kind of project — real products, architectural work, and so on. The power to see this production work through will fully carry over into any other field and should be an overwhelming advantage.

So if there’s another interesting opportunity, we can take it on as it comes. The most important thing is that we keep “making things.”

Then here’s hoping new opportunities of some kind keep increasing.

I’d very much like to create them. And I want to keep us in a state where we can do so at any time.

As an aside — when asked what kind of company we are, will the staff start saying “we’re a design practice company” (laughs)?

“A design company” is fine for that, isn’t it (laughs).

Still, it makes for a good conversational hook, doesn’t it.

Right — it’d be good to be able to answer when someone asks “what does it mean?” I’d like people to get to know us, and eventually reach the point where they no longer need to ask.

Please look all through the site — and give us work! And please consider joining us, too.