Illustration

Alongside our shape library, we also include representational illustrations of characters and objects within the library that derive from Mona the Octocat's world to add a layer of GitHubby-ness to our branding. Some of these include illustrations of Mona, Hubot, elements from Mona’s worldbuilding language, and fully rendered gitlines.

All three GitHub Mascots, Mona the Octocat, Hubot, and Copilot, plus some plant life comprised of gitlines.

Application

Before using mascots, please read the mascot section of this guide for more explicit definition of when mascots are appropriate.

There are moments in our branding where mascot illustrations are appropriate to include, and moments where they are not. For example, it makes sense to include Mona in design assets featuring Collaboration content which highlights our community, and our Copilot mascot in design assets featuring AI content. But the same is not true for Enterprise, Security and Productivity, which should stick to only shape library assets. Below we have provided social asset examples putting this to practice.

Two example vertical social assets with white backgrounds featuring abstract illustrations as well as Mona and Copilot and placeholder lorem ipsum copy


Product icon illustration

We also include rendered illustrations of product icons that can represent each product pillar. We use these to highlight pillar-specific content, typically in real life events.

Five spot illustrations – one for each of our product pillars which are labeled AI, collaboration, productivity, enterprise, and security


Render complexity

Here is a range of render complexity, using a Copilot illustration as an example. The shape library contains both render styles in both Light and Dark available for all shapes and illustrations.

Two illustrations of a Copilot head: one in simple black lines and one in full color with shading


Application

When it comes to deciding a render style, we first ask if the content we are designing for is an expressive moment or a functional moment. When the artwork is meant to be more supportive rather than attention-grabbing, we lean towards the quieter outline renders, or a balance of both styles to allow other elements (such as text) to stand out. The opposite would be true for the fully-rendered art style if we are trying to capture the audience’s attention with the art itself.


Functional moments

Three example assets from GitHub Universe 2023. Two of them are wayfinding signage for The Hub and The Garden in blue and green respectively. The third is a 9:16 speaker card that says "I'm speaking at GitHub Universe" paired with an illustration of Mona, a duck, and some colorful abstract shapes


Expressive moments

Two rectangular assets side by side: a Universe billboard and an event badge, both featuring colorful illustrations