"An experimental visual archive exploring the forms, techniques and sensory characteristics of sushi."
Sushi No Kiroku, or “A Record of Sushi”, began as a personal interest project and evolved into an exploration of how editorial design and interactive data can make cultural and culinary information more engaging to discover.
Rather than a conventional recipe or restaurant website, each sushi is treated as an entry within a growing documented collection.
Designing the archive
The archive spans formats including nigiri, gunkan, maki, uramaki, temaki, oshizushi, chirashi, inari and narezushi.
Each entry follows a consistent information structure covering provenance, preparation, seasonality, richness, texture and flavour intensity, alongside editorial observations and chef's notes.
Visually, the project draws from Japanese editorial design and culinary archives. Monospaced typography, restrained colours, structured grids and studio-style imagery give the website the character of a documented collection.
Interaction & exploration
Navigation is divided into two levels: sushi formats and the individual entries within them. This allows readers to move laterally through the archive while maintaining the relationship between an article and its wider collection.
The archive is also being developed as an interactive visual index. Sushi entries become tiles that can reorganise according to attributes such as format, richness, texture and flavour intensity, turning filtering into a form of data visualisation rather than a conventional results page.
Motion helps reveal these relationships as entries physically rearrange between different classifications.
From Figma to live product
The visual concept began in Figma and was initially prototyped with Figma Make before moving into Codex for production development.
Working directly with the live implementation created a continuous design → build → test → refine loop. Real-device testing has informed improvements to navigation feedback, responsive behaviour and browser compatibility as the prototype has grown into a functioning website.
AI-generated studio imagery currently establishes a consistent photographic direction, with professional photography envisioned as the archive develops.
The project is version-controlled through GitHub and deployed on Vercel.
An evolving archive
Sushi No Kiroku remains an ongoing interest project. Future development will expand the collection, deepen its cultural and regional content, refine its imagery, and explore new ways of visualising relationships across the archive.
