Once we googled for information. Now we google for doodles. What will the homepage logo celebrate today? Google's designer doodles have elevated scribbling to an art, and turned fact-finding into fun. They put a smile on your face before you punch-start your search. You wonder what the doodle means, and start googling for information. There can't be a better business model.
Like a lot of good things, the google-doodle happened by accident. In 1998, on their way out to the Burning Man festival, founders Larry and Sergey stuck a stick figure behind the second “o” in the logo as a fun message that they were “out of office”. The audience loved it. Later, the duo asked the interning webmaster/art student Dennis Hwang to doodle Bastille Day into the logo. Wow! Hwang got appointed chief doodler (what a job!). Since then, his doodles have covered national/international jigs (Winter Games to the Mars Rover landing), artists and scientists.
“If it's in line with the Google brand, we commemorate it,” says Hwang, in his blog. It's mind blowing technology. On its last birthday, the logo went bouncy — a set of colourful balls swirled and settled to form the word Google. It used CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet) to create leaping circular pieces out of a web page. The bubbles moved when you took your cursor to them. On May 1, portholes under your cursor enlarged scenes from 160 years of World Fairs. For his regular pictures, though, Hwang uses an older version of the Wacom CINTIQ 21UX (or cintiw 22) and Windows XP. Watch him create a doodle in quick time at http://www.youtube.com/watch?=TOOY0xuQ3YU, proving how much you can do with an “l,” an “e,” and a couple of “o's” and “g's” as Anat Amir, Google Africa put it.
The doodles are a runaway hit. “Anything Google does hogs attention,” points out Arun Prabhudesai of Trak.in. A proclaimed fan, he calls GDs “pictorial dedications to significant past events and current celebrations.” Like a lot of us, he was surprised to see the salute to “Alam Ara” on March 14. “I didn't expect Google to celebrate an event which probably Indians have forgotten about,” he said. “I googled — it was the 80th anniversary of the first Indian movie with sound!” He was thrilled when the picture showed up on both Google.co.in and Google.com pages. Pro blogger Amit Agarwal too learnt about the status of “Alam Ara” only from the doodle. Just back from a Google conference, he said, “They are extremely creative and are one good reason to check the Google homepage every few days. They teach us something new, some interesting part of our history.”
Inevitably, there are demands. Thomas Edison got a doodle, why not Nikola Tesla, a fan fumes. Please post a special logo for the Iranian celebration (Chaharshanbe Suri), another prays. How did Google miss the 25{+t}{+h} anniversary of the first .com site registration, a third wonders. Google is open to ideas. “Suggestions, yes,” Hwang says, narrating how a French astronomer's e-mail on Venus' transit produced the logo with a black dot moving across the sun.
Did you see the one on Charlie Chaplin, 100 years of celebrating women, Verne's 183rd birthday [you could “navigate the Nautilus (nearly) 20,000 leagues with a lever, while keeping an eye out for a giant squid”], 50 years of the Flintstones, 40 years of Sesame Street? On September 5, 2009, the logo appeared minus the second ‘o' and had a coded tweet from some alien captors. People played along, looked for clues about abductors. Ten days later, the UFO returned and left a mysterious mark on the fields.
The next clue was the latitude/longitude coordinate of Horsell Commons, the location of the first alien landing in The War of the Worlds. It was Wells' 143rd birthday! Doodlers celebrated Holi, gave Will/Kate a signature gift: a colourful scene of London landmarks with a carriage in front.
In 2008, the GD team launched an annual art competition, Doodle4Google. Kids were asked to dress up the logo to answer “What if...” The best four entries were posted for voting. The winning artwork was on Google homepage for a day, the kid carried home some cool prizes — a college scholarship, a technology grant for the school, the work on show at a Smithsonian museum.
The “I love football” contest drew doodles from all over the world. The creative team marked Children's Day with a D4G contest for Indian kids. The drawing by Akshay Raj, class IX student from Mangalore was voted the winner. “Three qualities mark the best,” says Hwang. “Originality of the doodle idea; integration of the design with the Google logo; sheer creativity.”
YOU CAN…
* Send requests and fan logos to proposals@google.com.
* View the gallery at >www.google.com/logos .
* For contests, check out >google.com/doodle4google .
* Mobile versions can be seen on Android 2.0+ and iOS 3+ devices worldwide.
