Sushi Sticky Notes

Kenjiro Sano made sushi-shaped sticky notes. They look like pieces of nigiri—little notepads that look like something you’d actually eat. The idea shouldn’t work as well as it does, but he bothered to actually execute it instead of just leaving it as a joke. He calls himself Mr. Design, which is either totally serious or completely ironic, probably both.

The thing that gets me is how little it actually changes anything. Sticky notes still stick. You write something on them and they end up on your monitor or forgotten in a notebook, and eventually they disappear. But because they look like sushi—which is also temporary, also consumed and gone—the whole exercise becomes funny in a way that matters. It doesn’t make the sticky notes better. It just makes them feel different when you reach for one, and that changes something. Fifteen euros for a pack is more than you’d normally pay for paper, but you don’t notice because there’s something right about using these instead of the standard yellow rectangle.

There’s a kind of designer that only works with restraint, and a kind that doesn’t. Sano is clearly the second type. He doesn’t see a sticky note and think about minimalism or utility or function. He sees something to play with, an opportunity to make the everyday feel like a small discovery, and he takes it.