When Design Is Just Obviously Right

Kenjiro Sano calls himself Mr. Design—no qualifier, just the noun. The confidence reads as either delusional or completely earned, and his sushi memo pads make the case for the latter. They’re notepads shaped and colored like nigiri: a rectangle of white rice paper topped with a pressed slab of salmon, tuna, or tamago in the appropriate shade. You peel a piece off the top and write on it. That’s the whole thing.

What I like about objects like this is that they don’t solve a problem—nobody was suffering from a memo pad deficiency. They find a shape for something ordinary that makes it feel like a discovery. The design earns its wit because the function is real; it isn’t just a joke product. Spoon & Tamago covered them when they came out, and you could pick one up for around fifteen euros—cheaper than a decent plate of nigiri, and considerably more permanent.