Octicons
Octicons, our product icon library, are our default icon. Their usage and brand equity help strengthen and reaffirm our commitment to consistency and dependability in brand. We support these icons with a set of larger illustration-like spot icons.
See Primer’s Octicon documentation for a complete look at this library and its optical sizes.
Spot icons
Our spot icons build from our gitline shape library, taking the timeline and commit circle and bending them into the shape of our well known product icons. This set isn’t a replacement for octicons and shouldn’t be used in small sizes.
Usage
Octicons are our open source icons that are typically used in the GitHub product. In a brand context, we use them to give text visual flare and a relationship to it’s content, such as custom bullet points or bento box flairs in our blog.
Icons occasionally get woven into our keyart to help distinguish content from one another. The art and the mascots should always take center stage, allowing icons to add a semantic layer or serve as a decoration.
Outside of navigation and product icon lockups, Spot icons can add style and topical meaning to content and card layouts. Try to keep the color palettes restrained to neutrals, primary hero and secondary heroes, as color ratios are not as easily expressed.
When the visual is more abstract and restrained, Spot icons can be a simple device for connecting the visual to the topic.
