Doodle your Logo like Google!

‘Google Doodle’ is the buzz word these days. Whether it’s Christmas, Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day or any other important date, Google doesn’t miss out doodling for them. For readers who don’t know what Google Doodle is all about, here is a little piece of information on what it is, how Google started it, what kind of response are they getting from the people all across the world and how you, as a business owner can embellish your logo on different occasions?

We all know the literal meaning of the word ‘Doodle’, which means aimless drawing. Google, the most successful internet giant started doodling in the year 1999. Their first doodle was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on ‘Burning Man Festival’, which bagged a lot of popularity. So later on, in 2000, they assigned an intern, Dennis Hwang in their own company to take charge of this department named ‘Google Doodle’. His first doodle was created in 2000 for ‘Bastille Day’ and he’s been designing doodles for Google ever since.

According to Wikipedia: “Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called Fête Nationale ("National Celebration") in official parlance, or more commonly le quatorze juillet ("14 July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.”

Google altered its trademark logo by adding France flag on top of its ‘l’ and included fireworks to portray celebration. To make it more customized and right on target they incorporated the typography saying Liberte Egalite Fraternite. From their onwards, Dennis created a number of Google Doodles by the help of his dedicated team and the fans all around the world. He designed customized logos on birthdays of several renowned artists and scientists including Andy Warhol, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Louis Braille, Percival Lowell, Edvard Munch, Béla Bartók, René Magritte and Samual Morse etc.

The same year in October 2000, Google came up with a Halloween doodle.

They designed a spooky logo using black fonts, pumpkins and a spider web. It was extraordinarily different, yet creative logo and because of its uniqueness it got immense popularity among Google fans.

This practice was found very refreshing for the site visitors and who realized this better than Google.

Wael Ghonim, Google Marketing Manager in MENA, said: "At Google, we like to reflect the ever changing world of our users through the logo designs on our homepage. These 'doodles' celebrate different people, events or special dates. Whenever we change these doodles we receive a lot of public interest."

Their first Holiday Logo which was created back in 1999.

Afterwards, there was no looking back for Google as till now, they have created innumerable logos on different occasions, special events and dates. They believe in keeping themselves up to date and have set the trend of communicating with their visitors through their logos on every possible famous date or occasion.

Today, all over the world, Google fans wait with bated breath to see their next logo design. There are fans, who even dig out other special days and dates; and send them with creative design ideas which have not been covered by Google. Check out how Google fans have contributed to it in different styles.

It’s true that Google’s strategy of creating logos on different occasions lit up the atmosphere every time they displayed refreshing logos on their homepage. They created over 150 logos for different occasions including birthdays of renowned people, discovery days, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Earth Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Google’s own birthday, so on and so forth.

There is a list of super creative logos by Google on different dates, which of course I am unable to put up here, so here’s the link for all of you who are Google logo fans. Google has created an online Logo Museum for its fans.

To sum it up, this strategy is certainly gaining popularity and a lot many businesses have taken notice of it. So if you are a business owner and have an online presence, let your logo shine on different occasions. There are logo design companies who have started catering to this need of business owners who own a logo and want to be different on every occasion. Now the challenge for the logo designers is to come up with the most creative ideas every time as Google has set up a very high benchmark.

Let me know how you like the article and share it with us if your logo is being doodled recently on any important date or occasion in the comments section.

This is a post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.