GitLab Logo: Colors, Hex Codes & Design Analysis

Design analysis

GitLab's logo is a character mark featuring a stylized tanuki — a Japanese raccoon dog — rendered as a geometric, friendly face with pointed ears, whisker lines, and a distinctive nose dot. The mark is built from simple curves and straight segments that resolve cleanly at small sizes, functioning equally well as an app icon, favicon, or embroidered patch. Its bilateral symmetry and lack of fine detail give it strong legibility down to 16×16 pixels, a practical necessity for a developer tool that lives in terminal windows, CI badges, and browser tabs. The tanuki sits left of a lowercase wordmark set in a rounded, geometric sans-serif (customized from Inter), creating a balanced lockup that reads horizontally in navigation bars and stacks vertically in square formats. The character's open expression softens the technical density of the product category without resorting to generic code brackets or git-branch metaphors used by competitors.

Tanuki character with pointed ears and whisker strokesSingle orange shape + dark wordmark lockupReversible to white-on-dark without detail lossDistinct from branch/folder/bracket tropes in dev-tools

Logo colors, measured

Colors extracted from the logo image itself (background removed), with share of the mark each color covers.

Click a chip to copy its hex code.

The measured #171321 (Corbeau) appears as a near-black accent, likely used for the wordmark or a monochrome variant, while the brand's primary orange (#FC6D26) dominates the tanuki mark. This dark neutral grounds the energetic orange, providing high-contrast accessibility on light backgrounds and allowing the character to reverse cleanly to white on dark UI surfaces — a critical requirement for an IDE-integrated platform. The pairing avoids the blue-heavy palette common in dev-tools (GitHub, Azure, Atlassian), giving GitLab immediate chromatic differentiation in a crowded market.

Variations & downloads

Color variants generated from the vector source — free to download for identification, editorial and research use.

Primary SVG PNG

White SVG PNG

Black SVG PNG

Visually similar logos

Nearest neighbors in visual embedding space — marks that share shape and structure with the GitLab logo, regardless of color or industry.

Brand web palette

Colors GitLab uses across its website — the broader brand system around the logo.

About GitLab

GitLab is a leading brand that offers a comprehensive platform for software development and collaboration. With a global user base of over 100,000 organizations, GitLab helps businesses increase operational efficiencies and deliver better products at a faster pace. By integrating all stages of the software development lifecycle into a single application, GitLab enables teams to streamline their workflows and reduce security and compliance risks. GitLab not only provides a conducive environment for code management, but it also facilitates seamless collaboration, issue tracking, and continuous integration and deployment. With its user-friendly interface, GitLab allows developers to efficiently manage their projects and improve productivity. Whether you are a small startup or a large enterprise, GitLab offers a free 30-day trial with no credit card required. You can register using your Google or GitHub account, or create a new account with just a few simple steps. Already have an account? No worries, you can easily sign in. If you prefer to host GitLab on your own servers, you can also start a self-managed trial. Experience the power of GitLab and take your software development to the next level

Questions about the GitLab logo

Why did GitLab choose a tanuki for its logo?

The tanuki is a Japanese folklore symbol of prosperity, adaptability, and teamwork — traits that align with GitLab's "everyone can contribute" philosophy. Co-founder Dmitriy Zaporozhets selected it early on as a memorable, culturally positive mascot that stood apart from generic code icons.

Has the GitLab logo changed significantly since launch?

The tanuki character has remained conceptually consistent since 2014, but was professionally redrawn in 2019 to improve geometric consistency, optical balance at small sizes, and reproduction across light and dark modes. The wordmark was updated at the same time to a custom rounded sans-serif for better readability.

What color is the GitLab logo?

The dominant color of the GitLab logo is Corbeau (hex #171321). The closest Pantone match is 532 C.

How many colors does the GitLab logo have?

The GitLab logo uses 1 primary color: #171321.

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The GitLab logo is a trademark of its owner, shown here for identification and design research. Color data is measured from the public mark by LogoLabs; analysis is editorial commentary. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.