Mori no Oto — a record label that sounds like a forest

The label had twelve years of catalogue living in a spreadsheet and a Dropbox folder. Every release announcement was a hand-built page, and the Japanese and English versions had drifted far enough apart that they described different track listings.

We rebuilt the catalogue as structured content first and designed second. Each release is one document with paired Japanese and English fields, so a translator sees both languages on one screen and the publish button refuses to work until both are complete.

The visual language came from the room the records are mastered in — long horizontals, a lot of air, and type that sits low on the page. Motion is used exactly twice on the site, both times to mark a transition between catalogue eras.