During the summer of 2009 I participated in a startup incubator as a member of the OpenHatch team. I designed a baby penguin mascot for the company named Sufjan. (The name came from the musician Sufjan Stevens, as his picture had been used as a placeholder previously and we didn't bother to change the filename.)

Originally Sufjan was just meant to be the default profile photo for new users, but the character took on a life of its own.

Sufjan went through many variants, including hand-drawn Sufjans sent to our donors as thank-you gifts.

As lead designer, and later as a volunteer and board member, I iterated on the website's styling over several years as the organization's focus shifted from online tools to education and events. Working on the OpenHatch website was my introduction to programming in Python and to the web framework Django.

The OpenHatch web app also featured banner cartoons for each section.