foursquare bots.
Years ago I created an illustration of myself as a child. I affectionately called her ‘little mars’ and over the years I’d put her in various situations to help illustrate my life. When foursquare needed a default user icon for girls and boys, I jumped at the chance to use Little Mars for this. I altered her appearance slightly and created a boy version as well. Little Mars (aka marsbot) also shows up in various other places of the site/app if you know where to look. I’ve slowly been creating characters for some of my foursquare co-workers in the style of Marsbot. Can you guess who is who? (hint: the girl is actually supposed to be me)
PS these are a work in progress.
These are the work of Mari Sheibley, Foursquare’s lead designer and the graphic eye, mind and hand behind Foursquare’s eye-catching and fun look, from the badges to the little default head for users who don’t upload a picture. You’ll recognize that head in the cute illustration above - as well as the ratio in the representation. One girl out of eight in a NYC startup is pretty standard. (Maybe even a good ratio - and better than the NYMag photospread!) To be fair, that’s not all of Foursquare by a long shot - they’ve been doing a lot of hiring lately, and a lot of those hirees are women. But this illustration is a stark if adorable reminder of how the ratio plays out visually.
BTW, in doing a bit of backgrounding on Mari’s work I came upon her website - I had no idea she was the designer behind so many great looks on the web! SheFinds, Jetsetter, Rent the Runway - her imprint is everywhere. And yet I can’t find a feature on her anywhere. Someone write this woman up stat! Where’s her magazine cover? (Because she’s also super adorbs.) Wired UK, that gauntlet be thrown.
