Authors: Mark Thompson Minko Gechev

Angular is a framework with a large and diverse community and wide recognition. In the state of JavaScript Angular ranked number one in the awareness category. Unlike many other prominent open-source projects and technologies (e.g., Go's Gopher, Linux's Tux, PHP's ElePHPant, Rust's Ferris the Crab), Angular currently lacks an official mascot.

Over the years we’ve received many requests from people asking for a mascot they can use as a plushy or put on a keychain, so we decided to explore the space!

We got in touch with the people who developed the mascots for Dart and Firebase. We shared with them Angular’s strengths, history, and stories that gave them a grasp of our community’s culture. Incorporating our latest design, they developed a series of mascot proposals that our team members (and their kids) filtered down to three.

A key value of Angular is to be inclusive and make community-driven decisions, so we’d like to kick off a process to create our official mascot! We can use the three initial mascots as a starting point, but we’re open to any variation or community proposal.

Reflecting back to past RFCs, we made a lot of great design choices thanks to community feedback, such as the latest control flow syntax, for example. Let’s do the same with Angular’s future mascot 🙂

Goals

• To select an official mascot that represents the values and characteristics of Angular and its community
• To create a mascot that is visually appealing, versatile, and easily recognizable
• To foster community engagement and excitement around the Angular brand
• To establish clear guidelines for the mascot's usage

Non-Goals

• To replace the existing Angular shield logo. The mascot is intended to be a complementary brand asset
• To rush the process; finding the right mascot requires careful consideration and community consensus
• To create a mascot that is tied to a specific version or feature of Angular, ensuring longevity

Proposal 1️⃣ - Angular shaped character

Variations of shaped characters that pull inspiration from Angular’s logo.

These little sprites are abstract, sharp, and helpful.

Proposal 2️⃣ - Anglerfish

The Anglerfish conjures bright ideas from their luminescent antenna- almost representing a lightbulb!

This sea creature dates back to about 130-100 million years ago making them wise, adaptable, and resilient.

Yes, we know the real life Anglerfish looks horrifying but our twist of it is certainly cute! Don't click on this photo of a real life anglerfish...we warned you.

Proposal 3️⃣ - Anglerfish variation

Open questions

If you’d just want to cast your vote for one of the existing options, add a comment to this post using

1. 1️⃣ for the first proposal
2. 2️⃣ for the second
3. 3️⃣ for the third proposal

Other questions that we’d love to hear from you:

1. What can we improve in the proposal you picked?
2. How would you name the mascot? (We’ve already heard Fishy McFishFace)

We’re pretty excited to create the mascot together! Just a reminder that this RFC, just like any other discussion on GitHub, is under the Angular code of conduct. Please, make sure it’s inclusive and appropriate.

Next steps

After we collect a sufficient amount of feedback, we’ll close the RFC and pass it to our designers. We’ll iterate on the final concept and share an update within a couple of months!