Updated favicon

[ashygee]

The current state of the favicon has been in need of an update for some time. As of this writing, we are using the package octicon as the favicon and also as an avatar on social media.

Current favicon

Explorations

I've created a few variations based off of the paintbrush illustration element that has been used consistently to represent Primer in the READMEs and header illustrations of the site. Because the favicon is a small size, details are should be limited to only a clear brand representation. Using the stylings seen in the READMEs and header illustrations I've created the following options:
1.

2.

3.

4.

Explorations in use

Favicons in a variety of tab colors:

Favicon options in comparison to primer.style's current favicon:

I personally like options 3 & 4 the best. For option 3 I feel is in line with the header illustrations since it uses the box format that we've been using in a lot of our illustrations. For option 4, I like that it has some resemblance to what we use with GitHub's brand. I'm interested in hearing any feedback on these options.

cc @broccolini @emilybrick

[broccolini]

Thanks for exploring these options @ashygee!

Versions 1 and 4 stand out best contrast-wise so I think worth continuing with those options. Version 1 seems most recognizable with the Primer brand currently because it has the colors that are used in our illustrations. Version 4 stands out really well against different browser backgrounds, however I'm not sure if it's recognizable as a paintbrush or with Primer's paintbrush when outlined since it looses it's detail.

It occured to me that using the paintbrush could be problematic as a favicon because the paintbrush isn't used in all the header illustrations, for example it's not used on https://primer.style/design - and likely won't be used on every site.

I was also thinking we use the GitHub Mark in the header next to "Primer" and this will be our "home" link, and would be good to keep a connection with GitHub. In the new nav explorations I used blue-400 for the mark and heading, and I think we could use that for our favicon (on the style guide we currently use a gradient blue mark):

The paintbrush head works well for our avatar on GitHub and on things like twitter, particularly as it will be a bit larger in those places and therefore have more room for detail, so you could keep exploring that option for those assets—how would you feel about that?

[ashygee]

@broccolini that makes sense. I will continue to explore using the paintbrush for avatars then.

I'll put up some mocks with the GitHub mark using blue-400.

[ashygee]

Here are options using the GitHub mark but styled using a variation from Primer's blue color palette. The values used are blue-600 and blue-400. The original package favicon is set to blue-600 but per @broccolini comments above we may also want to consider consistency between the top navigation for the site and our favicon to uphold branding. For contrast, both values work well except in an instance where the theme such as the Classic Blue theme is being used, at this point blue-400 gets washed out.

--- blue-600 ---	--- blue-400 ---	--- original ---

[broccolini]

Thanks for mocking these up @ashygee 💖

I'm inclined to design this for the default styles and incognito mode. I have no idea how common these other themes are (I never use them!) and which browsers you've tested in, but if it works for defaults in our supported browsers then I would prefer to stick with blue-400 since it matches the new header.

(If you share more screenshots, it would be helpful to see the selected tab with the new favicon in too rather than the old one for comparison.)

[shawnbot]

Done in #118! ❤️