GitLab

GitLab’s logo centres on a geometric tanuki, the Japanese raccoon dog known for collaborative behaviour. The mark is constructed from interlocking triangular facets in three graduated orange tones: GitLab Red (#E24329) at the crown, GitLab Orange (#FC6D26) on the mid-face, and GitLab Amber (#FCA326) on the outer ears. These shapes converge into a compact angular silhouette that embeds the DevSecOps infinity loop within the tanuki’s geometry. The wordmark sits alongside in GitLab Sans, a custom typeface derived from Inter, set in title case with balanced character widths and a tall x-height tuned for screen legibility.

Logo history

GitLab’s first logo appeared around 2013 as a thin-line outline of a fox-like face paired with uppercase sans-serif lettering. The 2015 redesign introduced the filled, faceted tanuki composed of flat orange triangles and moved the wordmark below the mark, establishing the geometric language that persists today. The most significant update arrived on April 27, 2022, when staff product designer Jeremy Elder rebuilt the tanuki from the ground up. The 2022 version refined corner radii, simplified the facet count, unified the three-tone orange palette, and replaced the previous wordmark with GitLab Sans. The result is a tighter, more legible mark that scales cleanly from browser favicons to conference signage.

Design philosophy

The tanuki’s construction is deliberate: its angular facets mirror the DevSecOps infinity loop, embedding the platform’s core concept into the brand symbol without making the reference overt. The three-step orange gradient, moving from red through orange to amber, creates depth and directionality within a flat graphic. GitLab avoids blue, the default colour of developer tooling, opting instead for a warm palette that distinguishes the brand at a glance from GitHub, Bitbucket, and Jira. GitLab Sans was chosen for its UI-friendly disambiguation features and its ability to pair with the angular logomark without competing for attention.

Brand identity

GitLab’s Pajamas Design System governs how the brand operates across product interfaces, marketing, and partner materials. The core logo, a horizontal lockup of tanuki and wordmark, is the default format. The tanuki can appear alone once brand context has been established, functioning as the app icon and favicon. A signature purple (#554488) extends the palette beyond the logo, anchoring backgrounds, gradients, and UI accents across GitLab’s marketing and product surfaces. The wordmark never appears without the tanuki, reinforcing a strategy to build standalone recognition for the symbol in the way a swoosh or bitten apple operates independently of its parent name.

Cultural impact

GitLab’s tanuki has become a recognisable symbol across the open-source and DevOps communities, appearing on conference lanyards, contributor stickers, and CI/CD pipeline dashboards used by millions of developers. The choice of a tanuki, an animal associated in Japanese folklore with resourcefulness and teamwork, aligns the brand with GitLab’s founding principle that everyone can contribute. As the platform grew from a self-hosted Git repository into a publicly traded DevSecOps company, the mark’s geometric clarity allowed it to scale without losing character, a quality that has made it one of the most identifiable symbols in developer tooling.