CyberIda / Be Water
Interdisciplinary by nature.
Portfolio / 2026
Back to WorkArt direction / Individual concept
Waterfall and dark vegetation from the ECHO concept presentation.

ECHO

Land as
Resonance.

An imagined music label / Guizhou
Place, translated into a visual identity.
River ambience / 5:56

01 / The point of departure

Not a landscape.
A way of listening.

Guizhou is my hometown. For ECHO, its mountains, water and cultural diversity became a starting point for a fictional experimental music label.

The concept approaches place as a soundscape shaped by geography, human presence and collective memory. That premise becomes an identity, four album covers and a connected set of applications.

Individual Art Direction course project. A creative proposal, not an operating label or a catalogue of released music.

02 / A voice, then a resonance

ECHO identity with original callout lines: Interlocking Structure, Land & Signal, Spatial Coordinates.

A fleeting voice.
A lasting trace.

In my concept, “曰” represents the act of speaking; “echo” becomes its continuing resonance. The identity holds these ideas together: an immediate voice and an imagined archive of place.

03 / Four imagined releases

Different traces.
One listening world.

Four independently designed covers explore the premise through different image treatments, rhythms and degrees of silence.

Lost Land, complete album cover designed by Yihan Zhao.
01

Lost Land

A figure, a cloth, a landscape remembered. The body becomes a carrier of place.

Psychic Flow, complete album cover designed by Yihan Zhao.
02

Psychic Flow

Water and terrain meet an interrupted geometric frame. A landscape becomes a visual rhythm.

Photography by the author.
Nothing Might Be Everything, complete album cover designed by Yihan Zhao.
03

Nothing Might Be Everything

A river scene held between fragments. Distance and quiet become part of the composition.

Dream Time Has Gone, complete album cover designed by Yihan Zhao.
04

Dream Time Has Gone

Small traces gather across an open field: a dispersed atlas of places and memories.

04 / Off the sleeve

Something to hold.
Something to encounter.

The identity moves into records, printed matter and packaging. These are concept applications, not manufactured releases.

ECHO record and sleeve concept mockup.
Record study / I
Second ECHO record concept mockup.
Record study / II

Printed encounters

A sound imagined
in public.

The poster compositions extend the label into an imagined cultural programme.

Event details belong to the fictional concept, not real performances.

First ECHO fictional event poster.
Second ECHO fictional event poster.

An object with an inside

The archive,
opened.

A packaging study extends the graphic language into a physical collection.

Exterior of the ECHO packaging concept.
Packaging concept / Exterior

05 / A digital archive

A place to wander,
and return.

The website concept brings the identity and imagined releases together. Landscape, typography and album art lead the way.

ECHO proposed desktop homepage.
01 / Homepage concept
ECHO proposed desktop release archive.
02 / Release archive concept
ECHO mobile concept mockup 1.
ECHO mobile concept mockup 2.
ECHO mobile concept mockup 3.

Authorship & context

From a place I know,
to a label I imagined.

I defined the musical, visual and cultural direction for this individual course project, and independently designed the four album covers. ECHO is a fictional label; the work shown is an art-direction proposal.

Image & sound credits

Based on the author-supplied 23-page ECHO presentation and image folder. Photography for Psychic Flow is the author’s own. Other landscape references include images sourced through Xiaohongshu. The project author has confirmed permission for public portfolio display; copyright remains with the original creators.

Ambient sound: River in Icelandic nature by askeseverin, licensed under CC0. This external Icelandic river recording is not a Guizhou field recording or music from the imagined albums.