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Mari Sheibley is a graphic designer in New York City. Say hello via email.
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I know the new foursquare is totally old news now because it launched last week and in internet time that’s like 6 months ago, but I wanted to write a little something about it and was on vacation last week with internet that rivaled dial up in slowness. Also, I was on vacation.
For the past few years we’ve been iterating upon the same app — adding features and updating design. There wasn’t a lot of changes to the overall architecture or behavior of the app, and as we kept adding features, it got a little complicated. We decided it was time to take the app, tear it down and build a solid foundation that we can continue to build upon for years to come. We wanted to simplify the experience and de-emphasis the check-in. We wanted to make recommendations and search front and center and integrate features like tips and lists all throughout the entire product. We also wanted to evolve the visual layer. This was most important to me, as I’ve been working on that layer for the past 3 years and I relished the chance to update it. I wanted to make something beautiful, but more importantly useful. I wanted to evolve the design, but not lose the elements people have come to know and (hopefully) love about our product. The design team and I took careful consideration in colors, contrast, fonts and icons. We wanted the design to be smooth and seamless, so as not to overwhelm or outshine our product. Every piece has a purpose.
This is by far the biggest undertaking we’ve done as a company and by no means was it an easy process. We had 8 designers and an entire company of 100+ people working on iOS, Android, Blackberry and web simultaneously. It was amazing to see everyone come together on every front from product and design to engineering and marketing. I’m really proud to have been a part of this.
P.S. Read about the design process from Courtney, one of the other designers who worked on both iOS and Android.
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foursquare 5.0
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Icon-olution
As mentioned in a previous post about the evolution of our iphone app, one of the great things about working at a start up is the ability to iterate and the speed at which you can do this. As we strive to improve our product, we wanted to make sure we had an icon that reflected the current state of our brand.
To achieve this, we made a few subtle changes to the icon as opposed to a big change. This didn’t feel like the appropriate time to do a complete revolution; an evolution felt more apt.
You’ll notice we’ve rounded and softened the edges to better align with other illustrative elements you find in our app such as badges and icons. We’ve replaced the purple ball with a green ball, as purple no longer lives in our color palette elsewhere in the app or site. Green is one of our primary colors and we wanted that represented here. We’ve also gone back to a less perfectly parallel trail of the ball (which also makes our iconic check mark) to inject a more playful feel into the icon while still maintaining our clean edges and lines.
(note: I was not the original designer of this icon and this current evolution is the result of several talented designers on our team)
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