| Design at foursquare

Design at foursquare

The #allnew4sq design process has been wildly rewarding. Our designers examined everything from our typography to our iconography, seeking to maintain foursquare’s playfulness while evolving our style and our brand.

The old and the new

Although our designers spend most of our time in Photoshop or OmniGraffle, we appreciate the opportunities paper presents. Our preliminary sketches happened on whiteboards and in sketchbooks.

Early sketches for the venue and check-in screens

Seeking visual inspiration, we turned to magazines and books. Editorial pull quotes and typography influenced the Friends tab design.

Mags on mags on mags

As our designs solidified, we printed them out and hung them in a central space so teammates not directly involved in the design process could see them, ask questions, and give feedback.

Designs in progress printed out and pinned up

In this way and others, foursquare’s culture fosters cross-disciplinary teamwork. Most of our designers have coding experience, myself included. The designers commit asset changes directly to our client team’s Git repository. This lets us tweak and finesse designs efficiently (and meticulously!), without asking an engineer for help. One of our designers commits Objective-C code for the iPhone app; our Android team is teaching me about XML layouts.

git commit --all-the-pixels

One of the reasons I wanted to work at foursquare was because I wanted to work on something I believed in every day. I have always been fascinated by the line between physical and digital; foursquare toes this line by enhancing people’s experiences of the world around them. The team looks forward to bringing you more exciting ways to do this soon!