SOOT launches Spiral, a new visual search engine
SOOT is promising to revolutionise creative research with this exciting new tool that finds connections, patterns and ideas you didn’t even know you were looking for.
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SOOT, the visual intelligence platform building tools for creative exploration, has unveiled Spiral, an image search engine designed to make searching feel more like exploring. Built for creatives, researchers and anyone working visually, it turns a single prompt into a layered moodboard within seconds. The goal is simple: to surface links between images that go beyond tags or keywords and make it easier to follow curiosity where it leads.
Better yet, rather than simply presenting images in a flat grid, Spiral arranges hundreds of visuals within a curved interface that reveals patterns, timelines and aesthetic relationships in one view. Searching something like ‘the evolution of Tokyo street fashion from 1980 to now’ doesn’t just return pictures tagged with those words. Instead, Spiral maps subcultures, materials and influences to create a wider visual story. Founder and CEO Jake Harper explains that they “realised the problem wasn't just the algorithm – it was the geometry itself”. By curving the interface into a spiral, users can see hundreds of images at once, creating what SOOT calls “heat maps of relationships” that encourage discovery rather than ranking.
GallerySOOT: Spiral (Copyright © SOOT, 2025)
The result feels more like wandering through a visual landscape than scrolling a feed. For example, Spiral’s Deep Mode separates a single prompt into several threads, while the Lasso Search tool lets users grab a group of related images and look into them further. It can also pull from specific sources such as eBay, Vogue Runway or public archives, making it a useful reference tool for fashion researchers, art directors and designers.
SOOT: Spiral (Copyright © SOOT, 2025)
Interestingly, Spiral doesn’t generate new visuals. It works entirely with real images, reorganising what already exists online into something more coherent and inspiring. Essentially, it’s a system that respects how visual thinkers actually search and absorb information. Early users have described it as an ‘intuitive way’ to map out creative ideas. Creative director Ji Park says it helps define different worlds and moods quickly, while artist Oliver Torr notes that it allows both open-ended exploration and focused research in the same space.
Spiral is the first public release from SOOT, as it hopes to craft “the visual layer of computing”, including Spaces, a visual file system currently in private beta, and a developer platform that will open later this year. But with Spiral, the company is offering creatives a new way to explore, organise and connect with images that goes beyond the conventional search method.
GallerySOOT: Spiral (Copyright © SOOT, 2025)
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SOOT: Spiral (Copyright © SOOT, 2025)
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