A system and method for displaying items by receiving a query, identifying query feature values for similarity features associated with the query, identifying items each having item feature values for similarity features thereof, for each of the identified items and for each of the similarity features, determining a feature distance between the query feature value and the item feature value, and presenting the identified items in a two dimensional array of cells. The array defines reference vectors corresponding to the similarity features. The identified items are positioned within the array relative to the origin cell, for any of the cells, by determining difference function values. for the identified items each based on the feature distances of the item, the reference vectors and the coordinates of the cell, and placing one of the items in the cell based upon the determined difference function values.