Symbolarium is an encyclopedia of tattoo, symbol, rune and cultural motif meanings — a reference portal engineered from the ground up for search engines (Google, Bing) and generative search (ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Gemini).
The challenge
Build a service that scales to thousands of valuable subpages while maintaining content quality and consistent, unique artwork on every single one — with full SEO architecture, structured data and performance built in from day one.
Tech stack
The core is Next.js 15 (App Router) with TypeScript and static/ISR rendering at the edge (Vercel, Brotli compression, CDN caching). Data runs on PostgreSQL (Neon) via Prisma ORM, and the visual layer on Tailwind CSS and a custom design system: dark mode plus a light "old book" mode, Cinzel / Cormorant / EB Garamond typography, switchable without JavaScript.
What sets it apart
- Programmatic SEO — two navigation axes over a single entity graph, with strict thin-content and duplicate control so only unique pages reach the index.
- AI-generated tattoo previews — every motif in 9 execution styles (blackwork, fine line, dotwork, realism, irezumi and more). A custom pipeline combines text-to-image generation with a reference technique that keeps even runes, hanzi and Arabic calligraphy true to the source character.
- Complete technical SEO — Schema.org (Article, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Organization), dynamic sitemap, canonical and Open Graph tags.
Result
189 researched symbols, 469 generated tattoo previews, 17 topic categories and a full structured-data layer — tied together by a consistent brand identity and an architecture built to scale further.
See it live: symbolarium.pl
Tech stack: Next.js · TypeScript · Prisma · PostgreSQL (Neon) · Tailwind CSS · Vercel · generative AI.