GitHub homepage redesign | 2020

Designers: Cameron Foxly, Tony Jamarillo, Sam Oshin, Mark Otto, Stefan; Krause-Palfner, Lee Reilly, Tobias Ahlin, Cameron Foxly, Tony Jamarillo, Sam Oshin, Mark Otto, Stefan; Krause-Palfner, Lee Reilly, GitHub Inc., San Francisco, California, USA
Manufacturer: GitHub Inc., San Francisco, California, USA

Our redesign of GitHub’s homepage started back in 2019, when GitHub CEO Nat Friedman showed a visualization of open source activity on GitHub. It painted a picture of a truly global, interconnected community. We wanted this idea to serve as the starting point for a major redesign of the main site page for GitHub: github.com/home. From there, we got to work in sketching out what else we wanted to include, and realized that in addition to showcasing our interconnected community, we wanted to tell an authentic and compelling story of a developer’s daily experience.

When one comes to GitHub’s homepage, they are seeing a live visual of open source play out right in front of them, relaying the extraordinary impact of open source and GitHub. As one navigates through the page, they’re transported through the daily experiences of a developer, watching the value and power of GitHub come to life through animation as one scrolls.

The most important part of this project was to make the homepage look and feel authentic for the developer community. This, of course, includes our octocat mascot, Mona, throughout.

In redesigning GitHub’s homepage, we wanted anyone visiting to see the global, interconnected nature of open source, and both feel and see how GitHub augments and is the core of software development today. GitHub, with 56M+ developers on the platform, has grown immensely over the years, and we wanted to concisely showcase all of what we’ve been building in a way that was beautiful and engaging. Our homepage begs one to interact with it: whether that’s clicking on the globe’s visualizations, scrolling through the developer experience, and more.