The VLC Cone

VLC began in 1996 as a student project at École Centrale Paris, where the VideoLAN association had a well-documented habit of collecting real traffic cones off the street. When the player needed an icon they used one, as an inside joke, hand drawn in The GIMP by Sam Hocevar at a resolution you could count. In 2005 Richard Øiestad rendered the polished version VideoLAN still ships, and every page on videolan.org credits him in the footer. The cone became load-bearing: billions of downloads, an icon people recognize from across the room, zero dollars of marketing. VideoLAN keeps the joke running with seasonal builds committed straight into the repo, including the Santa hat that appears on the 354th day of the year and comes off on January 1, and an April Fools cone tipped on its side as a clownfish. There is even a settings checkbox for people who cannot take a joke.