the Go gopher

The Go gopher is a googly-eyed, buck-toothed rodent drawn by Renée French, whose gopher drawings predate the language by a decade; one promoted a radio station long before Google existed. When Go launched in 2009 the gopher came aboard as its mascot, released under Creative Commons so the community could redraw it freely, and it became one of the most remixed characters in programming: gophers in hard hats, gophers on rockets, gophers at every conference. Full disclosure from the Atlas: our studio typeface is also called Gopher. The rodent gets around.