Ayo
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. Ayo watches somebody who does not know Ayo 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 from "eight". Two letters, pronounceable, works on a shirt, and it sounds like a friend rather than a brand — 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 Ayo at postage-stamp size because the shape never changes, only the face.
The lore, if you want it
Ayo watched a character who was never real for thirty years. One day the character was retired from the show. Nobody told Ayo. Ayo 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.