Alumnus designed Snapchat Geotag gives South Pasadena new identity

By Faye Witherall

Feature Editor

Photos by Nayad Salim

South Pasadena now has its own Snapchat identity, thanks to a recent SPHS graduate.

Nayad Salim submitted an illustration that can be attached to images on the popular photo sharing media. Snapchat received the stamp three months ago and approved it as the city’s identifier on Tuesday.10676293_10205715922649949_8946301360120732931_n

Salim designed the blue and red mark during his Virtual Business class at South Pasadena High School with the assistance of Adobe Illustrator. He drew inspiration from the iconic Fair Oaks Pharmacy when creating the image that will appear on thousands of images that users will share on Snapchat.

“I thought of something that everybody associates with South Pasadena,” Salim said. After completing the image during a single class period, he submitted it to Snapchat’s geofilters website. Until today, the nearest South Pasadena identifier was the Pasadena tag.

Snapchat is a picture sharing application that was launched in 2011, and according to Business Insider, boasts around 200 million users.

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Recent graduate Nayad Salim’s design emulates the famous Fair Oaks Pharmacy neon sign.

Hundreds of designed location tags document schools, cities, parks, and campgrounds, and now, South Pasadena.
Salim is heading to University of California Santa Barbara in the fall where he plans to pursue business. Although there are no royalties associated with his design, he is happy to have his image selected.

“It feels good to leave something behind even though I won’t be here anymore because South Pasadena will always be home,” Salim said.