Simon Oxley (born 1969) is a British

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

who is most famous for designing the original bird logo for

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, the Octocat logo for

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, a mascot fo
YEN
and the Cody mascot for Software.com. Oxley was a prolific contributor to the

iStockphoto iStock is an online royalty free, international microstock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. History The company was founded by Bruce Livingstone in May 2000, as iStockphoto, a free stock imagery website supported by ...

site, which he had joined because of a free promotional offer for purchasers of the

Adobe Creative Suite Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a discontinued software suite of graphic design, video editing, and web development application software, applications developed by Adobe Systems. The last of the Creative Suite versions, Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) ...

. Both companies purchased Oxley's designs from the website (Twitter paid $10–15 for its logo, of which Oxley received $2–6) but the licence did not allow them to use the works as logos. Twitter's founders redesigned their logo in response, but GitHub asked Oxley for permission, which he granted. While the initial GitHub logo has gone on to develop into a more stylised form (the official "Invertocat" logo), GitHub developed Simon's original drawing into the Octocat logo and the character of "Mona Lisa the Octocat" which became a core part of their brand identity. Simon credits Japanese popular art as an influence on his Twitter design and others, and said he was grateful for the wide distribution of his images despite receiving very little compensation.

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* British graphic designers Logo designers 1969 births Living people People from Basingstoke and Deane People from Hampshire (before 1974) {{UK-artist-stub