A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Google's Themed Logos
Google announced yesterday that most of the themed logos that often appear on its home page will finally appear on mobile devices powered by Android, Google's operating system, as well as iOS, Apple's iPhone operating system. And if you've ever wondered who creates these doodles in the first place, there's news on that front as well.
It turns out that the California-based company has a small team of artists and researchers who craft these drawings for holidays , special events and arcane anniversaries.
Unbeknownst to web searchers in the United States, custom-made logos appear in countries all over the world pertaining to that nation's unique cultural heritage and identity, with a recent example being the flowery image above that ran for Thailand's Loy Krathong Festival on Nov. 21.
The San Francisco Chronicle spoke with Google's "Chief Doodler" (his actual job title) Michael Lopez and his team to find out how they go about making these bits of art that billions of people see around the world.
It all started in 1998 when Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin cobbled together a clipart stickman figure and placed it behind the second 'o' of Google. The founders of the then-young company wanted to let people know, should the website have a problem, that they had left the office to attend the Burning Man concert.
In 2000, the task of generating topical Google logos fell into the hands of an intern. Since then, artistic endeavor has become very important to both the company and its users.
"Lopez and his team produce doodles that can be fun and whimsical, stunning and interactive," the Chronicle wrote. "But the drawings serve an unspoken purpose: They humanize a behemoth built on algorithms, servers and semantics, connecting users across the globe to the Google domain."
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