It was done in-house. We really care about how our graphs look, because graphs represent information. It's like typography. Humans learned how to write 5000 years ago, and it took us a very long while until we mastered the art of transmitting information like that. Once we mastered it, however, we started caring about the way we present that information. For no specific reason, but we developed unique typefaces that look beautiful, different, yet transmit the same information.

Likewise, we've spent a ton of valuable time graphing and mining data from all over our stack; it's only natural that after that, we care about how we present that data. Like typography, it's hard because it's an arduous hunt for the aesthetics hidden behind information. But this hunt is what makes us human.

That's why we design beautiful graphs, just like we'd design a beautiful typeface. Not because we are GitHubbers, nor because we are designers, but because we are humans.

Life is too short to stare at ugly graphs. And yes, you should feel bad.

PS: we have no project managers at GitHub.

As an auto enthusiasts I absolutely love this idea. I recently purchased a new speciality car last year (2012 Jeep SRT8) and I must of said at least 10 times during the process that I wish there was a way to circumvent the dealer. Dealing with car dealers is one of the most fundamentally broken experiences I have ever witnessed.

Ready to drop $65k on a new vehicle I walk into a dealer and the first thing that happens is the sales man walks me to a desk, pulls out a piece of paper and starts asking questions and writing "whats your name?, how much do you want to spend per month?, what is credit like?, we can offer you really great financing." I had to interrupt him to explain that I just wanted to have a normal conversation first to even see if he could get the car. Turns out they couldn't.

After many other slimy conversations with car dealers (and being hassled in the parking lot before I even walked in the door) I finally found a dealer that was willing to special order the car I wanted at the price I wanted. I waited 4 months for the car and 2 weeks before it was ready to arrive a the dealer they called to tell me they didn't want to sell it to me for that price anymore and they were going to sell it for $10,000 over MSRP. Long story short, I had to threaten legal action just to be able to buy the car that I had put a deposit on and waited for 4 months for.

This is not the first terrible experience I have had with buying cars. The "car sales man" attitude is fundamentally wrong. About 80% of the sales people that I talked to at dealerships did not even know about the car I wanted to buy, mentioned the wrong engine or did not even know it existed.

I'm waiting for the day that I can just click "buy now" online and purchase a car with Zappos-like customer support at one fair, up front, low price without all the bullshit in between.