Meet SOOT: a visual-first filing system that turns chaos into clarity

Imagine you’re deep into a creative project, racing against a tight deadline. You’re looking for a specific photo, illustration, or typeface, but your files are a complete mess. Thousands of images with cryptic names are scattered across multiple hard drives. The exact image exists somewhere among that chaos, but there’s no easy way to find it.

Enter SOOT: a filing programme that uses visual mapping to organise images. Traditional systems sort files by names, dates and formats – an old-school approach that hasn’t changed in half a century. Other recent moodboarding tools are starting to introduce AI-powered visual search, but still present your information in a rigid grid. But not SOOT. Using a bespoke software that identifies intrinsic visual qualities like colour and shape, SOOT turns these rigid displays into an interactive map – a visual-first approach that turns chaos into clarity. No more endless scrolling. Simply browse through organised clouds of content, or search for images by relevant keywords – from colours and objects to textures and moods.

“Just as a forest naturally sorts itself into distinct ecosystems, SOOT automatically organises your files into meaningful gradients of connection that are much faster for the eye to navigate,” says CEO Jake Harper, who founded the company in 2020. The programme is currently in its closed beta stage. It’s due to launch later this year as a browser-based app, with plans for a smartphone and tablet app to follow. Right now, it’s offering early access to the waitlist.

Beyond organisation, there are multiple more uses for SOOT. Whether you’re a design studio looking to collaborate on a reference library, a photography agency sifting through image libraries, a brand looking to digitally exhibit its archive, or a shop looking to quickly share a new collection.

You can already preview how some companies are using it: browse every Air Jordan on sale through Goat by colour or shape, for example, or roam through Studio Moross’ hard drives from over 12 years of creative projects. You can also trawl through Tomorrow Type Today’s Instagram archive of over 10,000 images, searching for references and typefaces by moods or materials like ‘gothic’, ‘chrome’ or ‘sand’. Many creative professionals are using it for inspiration, as a curation platform, or to create moodboards and organise portfolios – like an assistant of sorts, that can pull out unseen connections between images.

The interface is simple: just paste Drive links, Figma files, Arena boards, URLs, or even a YouTube channel into a SOOT space in your browser, and SOOT will automatically map the data in real-time, organising it into a constellation based on visual traits. The images are then organised into an ergonomic 3D map – a continuous cloud of information to explore. Users can keep their SOOT space private, or share it publicly as a digital exhibition, a portfolio, or even a wishlist.

The platform has already received enthusiastic support from early users and investors, like Upfront Ventures, former Beats CMO Omar Johnson, and Dazed founder Jefferson Hack. “I'm excited for what SOOT can do for creatives with large archives,” says Hack, “it could help engage their fans with deeper, more enhanced discovery.”

Ready to let go of outdated filing tools? Join the waitlist now.