Foursquare's Brand Refresh Reflects Its Mission as a Location-Based Services Company

At the mention of Foursquare, the first thing that comes to mind for casual observers is the consumer app that launched in 2009—the early days of social media—that offered a way to "check in" at different locations, review businesses, read recommendations and get badges for their activity. Since then, the company has evolved into a technology platform, quietly ensuring that so many other top consumer apps—Uber, Spotify, Apple Maps, Airbnb—have accurate and smoothly running location services. Foursquare's consumer-facing apps still exist in the forms of Swarm and Foursquare City Guide, but compared to those early days, they're a smaller piece of what the tech company does overall. In the last two years, Foursquare has made two major mergers and acquisitions, solidifying its position as the leader in location services technology. In May 2019, it purchased competitor Placed from Snap Inc., and in April 2020, it merged with location data company Factual. Heading into 2021, Foursquare will have a new chief executive at the helm after current CEO David Shim announced last month that he's stepping down and will be replaced by Foursquare board member Gary Little, managing director at global merchant bank The Raine Group. To mark this new chapter, the brand unveiled a new identity today that's simpler and more modern to visually demonstrate the direction it's headed. A clean, sans serif typeface replaces the blocky, superhero-style logo of its previous iteration, and photography and elegant gradients are incorporated as a nod to the brand's location-based services. "We're past the adolescent phase of the company," said co-founder Dennis Crowley. "We know who we are—we are an enterprise technology company; we're the leader in location technology." A new look As part of the rebrand, led by L.A.-based design agency PlayLab, Foursquare has entirely revamped its website to introduce consumers, brands, partners and observers to its new visual identity. In addition to the main Foursquare logo, it's also incorporating a truncated version of the name with FSQ, shorthand that's long been used internally. As part of the new identity, Foursquare is incorporating a shorthand that's been long used internally: FSQ. The gradient images, which add a mature pop of color to the new look, were developed using Foursquare's location data. "The whole idea behind the gradient was about trying to create art out of our data," explained Foursquare creative director David Godycki. The data is completely anonymized, he said, and then run through an application created in-house to show "how people move." Lifestyle and aerial photography is incorporated into the brand's visual identity to "make it a little bit more contextual and connected to culture," said Foursquare creative director David Godycki. "I'm really excited to where this could go next year," continued Godycki. "We're in the infancy with the idea. Right now, we're just creating some gradients that are related to the company itself." This includes some of the art used on the website and in promotional materials, but also extends to personalized business cards for Foursquare employees. Each card is personalized to the employee. "We'll see how it evolves and see how we can continue to build out the identity and use the idea of human movement to drive the visuals and the brand concept," said Godycki. The gradients are created using an application that turns Foursquare's location data into art. Expert analysis While the new visual identity comes at a critical moment for the brand, Georgetown University marketing professor Christie Nordhielm cautioned against asking too much of the logo itself. "Companies tend to invest an awful lot into logos and into logo meanings that don't necessarily get communicated to the target customers," Nordhielm said. In reality, the consumer pays a very short amount of time looking at or thinking about a logo. "It's best when you're evaluating any kind of communication tool to try to bear in mind the amount of attention that the target customer is going to be paying to it relative to how much attention you're paying to it when you develop it," she said. The rebrand does check all the boxes of a successful logo, Nordhielm said. It'll work well in a digital environment on any size screen, and it matches the tone and positioning of the company in an elegant and aesthetically pleasing way. But beyond that, it's simply "a memory aid," said Nordhielm. "The rest of the success of the logo comes from all of the other marketing activities that occur around a logo that invest it with meaning." For now, the brand's relying largely on the website to introduce its new look to the world. Given the nature of its somewhat behind-the-scenes work, the continued success of its business and strong brand recognition within the industry, Crowley seems content with a relatively quiet rollout. Foursquare "will have its presence, but it doesn't have to be an over-the-top presence," Crowley said. "We have the brand, and then we have the system around it that I think provides the color and playfulness and swagger that we want." "This is kind of perfect for who we are in this moment in time," he added. Read Next: Foursquare’s CEO Is Stepping Down at the End of the Year