The unicorns of PVS-Studio

30 Aoû 2022

Author: Andrey Karpov

Let us guess: you're reading this article right now because you saw our unicorn illustrations and liked it. Anyway, we are pleased to see you here. In this article, we're going to tell you why we draw these unicorns, what they mean and what we do in general.

If you are not a developer, then you can just enjoy our unicorn's illustrations. The unicorn is a mascot of our tool that helps developers find errors in their code.

We have been collecting so many unicorns for the time as our company has been growing. And some of them weren't even published. For example, some unicorns were designed for booths at IT conferences. So, only the participants of conferences could see these unicorns. It's a pity that the images are idle stagnating in our archives. That's why I decided to publish them and make up a brief description.

If you are not a developer, you may stop reading here :). Enjoy our unicorns more with the #pvsstudiounicorns tag on twitter and tumblr.

For developers: I am going to dig deeper and refer to other articles. Get ready to read some background stories. Our company, PVS-Studio, is developing a static code analyzer of the same name. This tool allows you to detect many errors and potential vulnerabilities even at the code writing stage. Supported languages: C, C++, C#, Java.

Our official logo in a triangle shape is not impressive, indeed.

Actually, it looks a bit banal. Our company as well as the tool we created are hardly different from any other triangles :). We need such a simple logo though. It fits into a square — fairly useful feature. It's also easy to insert it into the official form and so on. By the way, I was convinced to have something that attracts the developers' community.

And, as I mentioned, the images of the unicorn became our company's brand. Read more about how it happened and how our unicorn changed here. Oh, I was nearly forgetting about his companion — a bug. I think developers understand the sense of their fellowship :D.

Our designers create various versions of Unicorn. How do we apply all of them? Here's a few options:

Design of articles;
Website;
Booths at conferences;
Handouts at conferences;
SMM-related tasks;
C++ Quiz and C# Quiz for developers (by the way, test your code review skill!!!).

As a result, only a few our followers know each particular unicorn. It's a pity. Dozens of our funny unicorns are just stored somewhere and wait for their catch. So, I came up to expose them to public view again and make up a brief description.

When I started to dig deeper, I found more than 400 different unicorns. Actually, I can find even more of them. No wonder, the designers have been creating them for about 10 years! Of course, I'm not going to publish every unicorn. I will introduce you to the most interesting and unusual illustrations. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter or tumblr.

What is PVS-Studio really about?

I guess there are developers who don't know us yet and it's their first time here. Why don't you read several articles describing the eternal struggle — our unicorn vs bugs:

Thanks for your attention. And now, just count unicorns instead of sheep to fall asleep. It's better for your code, believe me :D. And lastly, here's one more bonus for you: 50 terrible coding tips for a C++ developer. Bye for now.