GitHub has introduced Octicons, a new custom icon font, to update its visual language and improve the clarity and speed of its website. This change aims to replace outdated icons with more fitting representations, especially with the advent of new retina screen products, ensuring that their site remains visually appealing at any zoom level. The development of Octicons was a collaborative effort involving several team members who contributed ideas, sketches, and designs, with a focus on creating accessible imagery for concepts unique to their platform, such as repositories, which they liken to a journal that tells the story of a project's evolution. The new icon set leverages CSS3 techniques to enhance page load times and the overall user experience by focusing on rendering in the browser rather than relying on images.