Simon Oxley


Simon Oxley is a British freelance graphic designer who is most famous for designing the original bird logo for Twitter, the Octocat logo for GitHub, and the Cody mascot for Software.com. Oxley was a prolific contributor to the iStockphoto site, which he had joined because of a free promotional offer for purchasers of the Adobe Creative Suite. Both companies purchased Oxley's designs from the website 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. He credits the 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.