iYi
An eight lying on its side. Which is also infinity. Which is also two eyes. The lobes are the eyes — there is no head and no face, the whole glyph is doing the work, which is why it still reads at three centimetres on a shirt.
The eyes are the audience. iYi watches somebody who does not know iYi is there, which is the entire premise, so the mascot is not a decoration — it is the reader, caught in the act. The joke and the argument are the same thing.
The name is the drawing. i-Y-i. Two lowercase i for the two selves, the left one fully present and the right one smaller and dimmer, with a Y between them for the fork where the two sides diverge. The dots on the i's are the catchlights. It says iYi because it sounds like somebody you know rather than something you are sold, which is the point, because a parasocial relationship is with somebody who feels like a friend.
Eight expressions
One silhouette, so it reads as one character.
The two lobes are identical in every expression. That is the constraint that makes it a character and not a set of stickers — you know it is iYi at postage-stamp size because the shape never changes, only the face.
The lore, if you want it
iYi watched a character who was never real for thirty years. One day the character was retired from the show. Nobody told iYi. iYi found out the way everybody finds out.
That is the origin, it is genuinely the thesis of this site, and it leaves about forty years of adventures in it. It is also the most useful thing about a mascot: it is not a decoration on the brand, it is the brand's argument with a face on it.
Merch files — every expression as clean vector, plus single-colour flat versions for stamps and vinyl — are in img/mascot/. Regenerate with python tools/mascot.py --sheet.