Designing, Diagramming & Printing Origami for GitHub

Last week, we finished an exciting collaboration with GitHub.  The project is for the upcoming GitHub Universe 2025 event.  GitHub Universe is GitHub’s annual global developer event. It is a two-day developer event celebrating innovation, collaboration, and the boundless potential of AI-powered development.   The project blended custom design, diagramming, and printing — and we’re thrilled to share how it came together.

The Idea

GitHub wanted something more than our traditional folding workshop.  They asked for a branded origami experience — models that represented their playful mascots, and were achievable by anyone.  They wanted a project that displayed their open-source spirit and the way developers collaborate.

The challenge was to design three original models:

1. Mona-  She is the official GitHub mascot and supports and enlivens all of their messaging.  To the average person, Mona is just a cartoon character. But to the developer community, Mona is an icon.
2. Copilot-  He represents the latest in Ai tech. Copilot appears whenever they talk about the GitHub Copilot feature.
3. A Paper Jet Airplane- This was to add a nice starting point for folding models, and to add something playful.

Designing the Models

Concept

We started with the brand imagery from GitHub.  From there Frank Ling, Head of Design for the origami studio played with several origami versions, but after some revision landed on the models below.

Color & Branding

GitHub’s own imagery guided our final coloring choices — Using the files from them, we were able to carefully extract and overlay the unique features of each model to their origami counterparts.

We also kept printing in mind: clear fold lines, visible iconography, and good contrast.

Diagramming the Folds

Once the final folds were set, we moved on to the diagrams.  In this case GitHub was interested in making the folding process as simple as possible, so we went with the fold-by-numbers folding process that Taro Yaguchi has perfected over the years.  Here are two recent examples of this innovative folding process.

Taro’s Origami Studio

Custom Origami Aventia Dove Instructions

🕒️March 10, 2025

https://www.tarosorigami.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Aventia-BrandMark_FullColor-01-1.pngEstablished in 2022, Aventia provides a comprehensive suite of environmental consulting services.  But when it came to consulting about recreating their logo, they came to Taro's Origami Studio.Having already seen some of Taro's other origami logo projects (like Zenefits, Current, or ROI-DNA) Aventia requested an easily-foldable and fully-diagrammed version of their own bid.Aventia's log...

Taro’s Origami Studio

Berkeley Haas Origami Campanile

🕒️June 6, 2019

There are a lot of great ways to use origami these days- like recreating a unique shape, spreading information, and getting people to try something new, and in conjunction with the Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley, California, Taro's Origami Studio helped create a project that did all three.The unique vision for the project started with a simple question.  Could Taro's Origami Studio create something simple enough for anyone to fold, but complex enough that woul...

This process has a number of benefits:

• It takes up very little space
  • Allows for single sheet handouts
  • Provides more space for copy and branding opportunities
• It requires no knowledge of origami diagrams
  • Folders only have to find the next number and fold on that line
  • The panels help keep the model properly oriented
• Minimalist Design
  • After folding on the lines, the numbers disappear into the model

Everything was drawn as crisp vector art in Adobe Illustrator, making it easy to update and create both print-ready PDFs and web-friendly PNGs.  Each model sheet was laid out into the origami square and a thin strip of explanation and company copy above it.  Take a look below to see how the numbers were added to the model so it can be folded easily.

Printing

For the event, we printed 100 kits of each of the designs, for 300 total models.  In order to get as close to the thickness of origami paper as possible, we used 60 gsm paper.  This meant that everything folded flat when creased and the airplane would have plenty of lift for accurate flights.

But the best part was that we added in a custom perforation cut along the top of the paper.  This meant that the origami square could be easily separated from the rest of the instruction strip.

Final Thoughts

Creating custom origami for GitHub showed how paper art and technology can meet beautifully.
Folding turns abstract concepts like mascots and branding into something real — a small sculpture you can create, hold, share, and talk about.

On this project we learned again how clear, simple visuals can tell a story and how to balance design and client goals. Working on this project and watching everyone fold together at the conference reminds us why we love what we do:

Origami brings people closer, one crease at a time.