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Tag: Doodle

  • Bram Stoker Doodle Lets Google Show Its Gothic Side

    Long before all of the glitter and high-school melodrama, the vampire-oriented literary scene was dominated by Abraham “Bram” Stoker and his classic gothic novel Dracula. And today, Google is honoring the author with a Doodle.

    Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 8th, 1847. Google is celebrating Stoker’s 165th birthday with the Doodle, which is appearing on the other side of the world first, as per usual. Stoker is credited with a dozen novels and a few collections of short stories in his roughly 40-year career. Of course, most people nowadays know him for his 1897 novel Dracula, which introduced Gothic villain Count Dracula to the public. The epistolary book is responsible for much of the vampire literature and film we see today, although much of it has deviated from the portrayal in Stoker’s novel.

    Stoker created the most famous Gothic villain in history, and for that is included in the Gothic fiction canon. Dracula‘s blend of romance and horror lead it to still be a widely read and studied novel, even in a culture saturated with vampire references.

    Stoker died in 1912 at the age of 64.

    As always, Google links today’s Doodle to a specific search term. This time it’s “Bram Stoker books,” which allows Google to advertise their own product. Under the book selection, regular results as well as the knowledge graph appear.

    The last time Google celebrated a major author with a Doodle was in October, when they released one celebrating Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. We made the point that Google took the opportunity to make the search term “Herman Melville books” instead of “Moby Dick,” even though the actual Doodle celebrated Moby Dick specifically. Since Bram Stoker’s Doodle actually celebrates the author’s birthday, not Dracula specifically, this “books” query seems a bit more logical.

  • “Where Do I Vote” Is Today’s Google Doodle Topic In The U.S.

    Google is running an Election Day doodle in the U.S. today, as the nation works on electing its president for the next four years. The doodle this time does not take us to “Election Day” results, however. It takes us to results for “Where do I vote,” which provides a built in tool on the search results page for users to find their specific polling place based on their address. More on the tool itself here.

    There is also a link on the homepage itself, which takes you to Google’s Elections site.

    On the results page, the first organic (non-Google) result (at least for this writer) is canivote.org, which is maintained by the National Association of Secretaries of State (described as the “nation’s oldest, nonpartisan professional association for public officials”). Its members are the chief state election officials in 39 states, but the site is actually hosted by Kansas.gov.

    The second result I see is for a Louisville KY voting site from the Jefferson County Clerk’s Office. This is presumably targeted to me because I’m in Kentucky, but since I live closer to Lexington (which would still not be helpful to me since I live in a different town), the result is pretty much useless. After that it’s a polling place finder for Minnesota. Then Massachusetts, Michigan and Idaho related pages.

    To make a long story short, without Google’s own tool, and possibly the first initial result, the organic results are simply not very good for the user. This makes Google’s own tool, which is the top non-paid result, the best result (out of the ones that are actually displayed). There is room for debate as to whether or not there are other choices on the web that are as good or better than Google’s tool.

    Either way, this is an example of where Google can improve the user experience by simply providing its own service – a big topic fo discussion in the search world.

  • L.S. Lowry’s 125th Birthday: Google Doodle Once Again Steers Users Away From Knowledge Graph

    Google is running a doodle on its UK site today celebrating the 125th birthday of English artist L.S. Lowry. Once again, Google has opted to display a pre-entered query for users who click the doodle, which fails to highlight its Knowledge Graph.

    Google seemed to be developing a trend of showing doodles that users could click through to instantly see Knowledge Graph results, which can be quite informative for those unfamiliar with the subject of the doodle, but lately, Google has been going a different route indicating that this is likely not something Google is really worried about (though it’s interesting considering that the company has been talking up the Knowledge Graph at virtually every public speaking opportunity).

    The query, this time, is “L.S. Lowry’s 125th Birthday”. If you do venture over to Google’s Knowledge Graph for Lowry, the search engine (via Wikipedia, as usual) will tell you that:

    Laurence Stephen Lowry was an English artist born in Stretford, Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict nearby Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury, where he lived and worked for over 40 years.

    It will also tell you that he was born on November 1, 1887, that he died on February 23, 1976, and that he was buried in Southern Cemetery in Manchester. It will also tell you that his artwork included Portrait of Ann, Coming Out of School, Cranes and Ships, Glasgow Docks and more. Other tidbits it drops from the search results page are that his education included Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Salford, and that his parents were Elizabeth Lowry and Robert Lowry. Clicking on any of these items will, of course, take you to Google results for their respective queries.

    According to Google’s Knowledge Graph, people who search for L.S. Lowry also search for Braaq Fred Yates, Pierre Adolphe Valette and Helen Bradley.

  • Happy Halloween! Google Doodle Query Hides Halloween Easter Egg

    As reported on Tuesday, Google is running an interactive Halloween doodle on its homepage. It hit the other side of the world first, as usual, and today, it’s live here in these parts. You can read more about the nature of the doodle itself here.

    Here’s a video Simon Rüger put together displaying the animation:

    Once you get through the interactivity, and get to the search results, you will find the query is “Happy Halloween!” This is interesting because Google has recently been using its Doodles to show off its Knowledge Graph a bit. The recent Herman Melville doodle, for example, gave users a chance to see Knowledge Graph results for the author, see other authors people search for, and learn more about the man himself, as well as the Moby-Dick book.

    “Happy Halloween!” does not display Knowledge Graph results, while a simple query for “halloween” does. It seems like a bit of a missed opportunity for Google who has been heavily pushing Knowledge Graph since it launched. Had the query been “halloween,” the countless users who click through the doodle to get to the search results page would have been greeted with knowledge (from Wikipedia) that, “Halloween or Hallowe’en, also known as All Hallows’ Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows.”

    Google has apparently also hidden an easter egg here. Users for the “halloween” query, would have also been given the option to refine their search results page for “halloween 1978,” and seen something like this:

    Happy Halloween

    Notice those little pointy things in the Knowledge graph results. Those are bats who fly away upon mouse-over. They are actually appearing on Knowledge Graph results for a plethora of horror movies.

  • Happy Halloween! Google Celebrates with an Interactive Doodle

    Google users in the U.S. are still stuck with the boring old Google logo, but users in places like Australia are being treated with Google’s new Halloween Doodle – an interactive experience complete with sound.

    On this Doodle, users are greeted with a bunch of closed doors, which they must open with a click. There are five doors in all, each revealing a ghostly/monster depicting of the G-O-O-G-L-E. Once you open the doors to reveal the creatures, you can click on them again to interact.

    There are a couple more clickable areas on the Doodle, but I’ll let you find them on your own. Here’s the Doodle pre-interaction:

    And post-interaction:

    Last year, Google celebrated Halloween with a special pumpkin carving doodle. They used six giant pumpkins for the doodle, some weighing in at over 1,000 pounds.

  • “Herman Melville Books,” Rather Than “Moby-Dick,” Is Google’s Doodle Query

    Update: They’ve actually changed the query to “herman melville books” rather than just “herman melville”. It still takes you to the Herman Melville Knowledge Graph results. You can still see Google.in has it pointing to “herman melville”.

    As previously reported, Google is running a doodle honoring author Herman Melville and the 161st anniversary of the original publish date of his novel Moby-Dick.

    As usual, the other side of the world got a look at it first, as October 18th came first in places like Australia, New Zealand and India, to name a few. This morning, the rest of us woke up to the image on our native Google homepages.

    Yesterday, we looked at how Google was showing off its Knowledge Graph results with the doodle, which when clicked, takes you to results for “herman melville” rather than “moby-dick”.

    In fact, either query will take you to Knowledge Graph results, but what is interesting about Google’s book-related Knowledge Graph results, is that they point you to Google Books pages in addition to the Wikipedia pages for the subjects. Herman Melville takes you to Wikipedia. Moby-Dick has a Wikipedia link, but the main clickable image takes you to Google Books, where you can purchase the ebook version.

    It’s an interesting choice that Google would point the doodle to the “herman melville” results rather than the “moby-dick” results, given that the doodle is clearly about the novel rather than the man, and the date itself is about the publication of the book, rather than Melville’s birthday (as sometimes, Google will run doodles honoring birthdays).

    Perhaps Google did not want to make the doodle seem like an ad for one of its own products (Google Books), in light of antitrust-related scrutiny the company faces from regulators.

    It’s entirely possible that we’re simply reading too much into this, but it’s an interesting choice nonetheless, considering the timing.

  • Winsor McCay Comic Little Nemo Celebrated with a Google Doodle

    Today, Google is treating us to a fantastic Doodle celebrating the 107th anniversary of famous American cartoonist Winsor McCay and his strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.

    McCay was born in 1869 (although this date is debated) in Spring Lake, Michigan. His career as a cartoonist and animator produced work that’s been said to have influenced other high-profile minds in the field like Walt Disney. He’s probably best known for 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur cartoon and the aforementioned Little Nemo strip.

    Today, that’s what Google’s celebrating; the official launch day of the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic – October 15th, 1905. Nemo ran in two separate newspapers, the New York Herald and New York American until 1914. There was a short-lived return to print for Nemo in 1924. The official end date for the strip was 1927.

    This time, we find Little Nemo in Google-land. The expansive doodle shows Nemo as he plunges through areas filled with the Google letters. The Doodle requires some user participation, as they are asked to click a tab in order to see Nemo continue his journey.

    Head on over to the Google homepage to check out the Doodle or you can watch it play out below:

  • Uganda Independence Celebrated With Google Doodle

    Today officially marks 50 years of independence in Uganda, and Google is celebrating the occasion with a doodle in the country, visible at Google.co.ug.

    The country’s early independence from British rule began in 1962, though this gave way to rule under various dictators, beginning with Idi Amin, who would become the third President of Uganda.

    Uganda has received more media attention here in the U.S. over the past year, than any other time I can remember, thanks to the huge viral success of the Kony2012 campaign (which has been back in the news thanks to its creator doing interviews about a breakdown he experienced following that success and the controversy it invited).

    The Huffington Post is running an interesting article from Twesigye Jackson Kaguri, founder of the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project, which works on behalf of HIV/AIDS orphans in rural Uganda to “end systemic deprivation, poverty and hunger”. He writes:

    As Uganda celebrates its 50th year as an independent nation, have things improved? Although we are a democracy, we have voted for the same president, Yoweri Museveni, a military leader, since 1986. It doesn’t take a genius to know one man should not lead a country over twenty years.

    We have a degraded road system in rural areas, worse than in Rwanda, a country that is led by a man educated and trained in Uganda, Paul Kagame. We have little or no healthcare facilities in many parts of the country, and too many people struggle with HIV/AIDs and malaria. Our educational system is inadequate and many children don’t even receive basic reading and math.

    Despite the KONY 2012 story focusing on Uganda’s past child fighter problems, , the Ugandan people remain hopeful for a better future. There were positive stories in the news too.

    For more on the independence of Uganda, Wikipedia has a series of articles looking at different periods in the country’s history, including the period beginning in 1962.

  • Google Celebrates Its 14th Birthday With A Doodle (Despite Earlier Founding)

    Google is running a doodle today celebrating its 14th birthday. For some reason, in recent years, the company has chosen this date to celebrate.

    When asked about the date, a Google spokesperson simply tells WebProNews, “We celebrate Google’s birthday in the month of September, when a couple of significant events took place — from filing for incorporation to registering the domain. During the past few years, it’s become a bit of a tradition to create a doodle on the 27th to commemorate the company’s birthday.”

    Google was actually founded on September 4, 1998. Google flat out tells you this if you search for “when was google founded”:

    When Was Google Founded?
    This is the date upon which Google was incorporated. Google confirms this on its about page. The page also gives you the super short version of how Google came to be:

    Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in 1995. By 1996, they had built a search engine (initially called BackRub) that used links to determine the importance of individual webpages.

    …

    Larry and Sergey named the search engine they built “Google,” a play on the word “googol,” the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google Inc. was born in 1998, when Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 to that entity—which until then didn’t exist.

    Regardless of the date, it’s pretty incredible to think about how Google has grown since this time; not only the search engine, but all of the other products and projects the company has launched over the years. I mean, look at Google Glass and Google’s self-driving cars, which are inspiring new laws. Who ever thought the quirky little search engine of 1998 would evolve into all of this?

    In a corporate timeline, Google shares an early review of its search engine from long-time industry analyst Danny Sullivan. In The Search Engine Report from August 4, 1998, Sullivan wrote:

    Google is an experimental search engine that, like Clever, uses weighted link popularity as a primary part of its ranking mechanism. Each page has a rank, based on the number of other pages linking to it and the importance of those pages. Importance, as with Clever, is derived from an overall link count.

    Google also makes extensive use of the text within hyperlinks. This text is associated with the pages the link points at, and it makes it possible for Google to find matching pages even when these pages cannot themselves be indexed.

    An important difference from Clever is that Google actually crawls the web itself, rather than analyzing a core set of pages from another search engine. Thus, its results should be more comprehensive. Over 25 million pages have been indexed, and the goal is to gear up toward 100 million or more.

    Google also provides some ranking boosts on page characteristics. The appearance of terms in bold text, or in header text, or in a large font size is all taken into account. None of these are dominant factors, but they do figure into the overall equation.

    So how about the results? I think many people will be pleased, especially for the ever-popular single and two-word queries. A search for “bill clinton” brought the White House site up at number one. A search for “disney” top-ranked disney.com, and sections within it like Disney World, the Disney Channel, and Walt Disney Pictures. Yet interesting alternative sites, such as Werner’s Unofficial Disney Park Links, also made it on the list.

    According to that corporate timeline, Google also rented a work space in Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park in September of 1998.

    The September 27 date does make an appearance in this early “About Google!” (note the exclamation point) document, as the last time it was updated. The contents of that page are as follows:

    Links

    Credits

    Have some memories to share about Google’s 14 years of existence? Feel free to share in the comments.

  • Clara Schumann Google Doodle Honors Influential Pianist

    Today’s Google Doodle honors Clara Schumann, a German-born composer and pianist whom many consider to be one of the best and most influential of the romantic period. She began her composing career in 1831, and by the time she was fourteen she had written a piano concerto. She first performed that concerto at the age of 16.

    But it wasn’t really her compositions that left a lasting memory on the public, at least not at first. It was her skill as a pianist that set her apart from contemporaries. She is credited with being the first concert pianist to play from memory (something that would become standard). She was also very influential in shifting the type of pieces concert pianists played from “bravura” pieces (those that were technically difficult, performed to showcase the pianist’s skill) to the works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and other heavy hitters.

    Schumann married fellow composer Robert Schumann, and together they worked to bring one Johannes Brahms to the public. Clara Schumann was the first pianist to play many of Brahms’ pieces.

    Schumann was born on September 13th, 1819 and died on May 20th, 1896 of a stroke. Today marks her 193rd birthday.

  • Maria Montessori Doodle Hits Google Homepage

    Google is displaying a new Doodle on its front page today, in honor of the birthday of Maria Montessori, the Italian educator known for the Montessori method of education.

    According the North American Montessori Teachers Association, the method is practiced in about 20,000 schools around the world, for children up to eighteen years of age.

    The method is rooted in independence and giving children a bit more freedom than they would have in more traditional schools. According to the the American Montessori Society, this includes things like mixed age classrooms, student choice of activities (within a set range of options), uninterrupted blocks of work time and a “discovery” model, where students learn from working with things directly, as opposed to simply being instructed.

    This doodle shares a special place in Google’s heart, as the company’s co-founders credit their success, at least in part, to the Montessori Method. Here’s a Barbara Walters interview with Sergey Brin and Larry Page talking about the impact it has had (hat tip to Barry Schwartz):

    “We both went to Montessori school, and I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit different,” said Page.

    Maria Montessori was born on this day in 1870. She passed on May 6, 1952 at the age of 81. In addition to her pioneering educational philosophies, she also practiced medicine

    According to Google’s Knowledge Graph, people who search for Maria Montessori also search for Jean Piaget, John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Erik Erikson and Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel.

  • Ignoring D-Day Isn’t The Only Reason Google Sparked Controversy With Its Drive-In Doodle

    About a month ago, Google ran a doodle on its homepage, celebrating the anniversary of the opening of the first drive-in theater. It even came with a special, playable video:

    Google irked some people with the doodle for choosing the opening of the first drive-in, as opposed to the anniversary of D-Day, which fell on the same day, but many were delighted with the memories of American tradition the doodle conjured up.

    Today, I was interested to see a piece of content come through my Google Alerts, that carried the title: “Google Killed A Part Of America’s Past.” It’s a short opinion piece from The Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I’m not sure why it was coming through today, nearly a month after the fact, but it says:

    As I accessed the Internet today for the first time (June 5), I was flabbergasted of what I saw on my homepage (google.com): A Google Doodle of Drive-Ins! When you click on the Google Doodle it provides some information provided by Google about drive-ins and how they were first started. But what they failed to mention is how they “destroy drive-ins and America’s past.” Being a Council Bluffs native, I have my share of memories growing up and going to the drive-in to see movies with my family on the weekends.

    I wanted to bring this to the attention of local readers that our local “company” that took away a historic landmark dares to educate people about the past, when they indeed killed a huge part of it!

    Google, as you may or may not be aware, has a data center in Council Bluffs, and the company did indeed bulldoze a drive-in, in order to set up shop. An InformationWeek article from 2008 confirms:

    Some local landmarks are getting bulldozed to make room for Google. A drive-in movie screen was the first to go. The nearby Presbyterian Church is slated for demolition, too.

    On its Council Bluffs Data Center page, Google says: Google is very happy to be located in Council Bluffs, IA. We announced our plans to build a data center here in early 2007, and today we are a fully operational site that has already begun benefitting our users around the world. We have had an excellent experience in Council Bluffs as we’ve built out this $600 million investment, and we look forward to being a part of the Iowa community for many years to come.”

    According to CinemaTreasures.org, the drive-in was closed in late 2007, and was demolished. “At that time, the owners were hoping to build a new twin-screen drive-in theatre at another location,” it says.

    VirtualTourist.com member Rich62, who uploaded the lead image to that site in 2006, captioned the photo:

    THERE ARE STILL A FEW DRIVEIN MOVIE THEATERS AVAILABLE IN AMERICA, AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM.

    Six years later, it appears that there are even less.

  • Opening of the First Drive-in Theater Celebrated With Google Doodle

    Google is celebrating the opening of the first drive-in theater with a new doodle on its homepage. When you click the play button, the show begins.

    The doodle comes with some appropriate sound effects and video (including an Android dashboard figure, a monster movie and the intermission screen). The only thing missing is a couple making out, though a girl does put an arm around her boyfriend. It ends with a popcorn tub that says, “Google”.

    Google has uploaded the video to YouTube if you want to just watch it here:

    When you click the doodle, Google shows you “The history of the drive-in theater” as the top result. It’s an Inventors page on About.com, which gives us a lesson on this classic form of entertainment:

    Richard Hollingshead was a young sales manager at his dad’s Whiz Auto Products, who had a hankering to invent something that combined his two interests: cars and movies.

    Richard Hollingshead’s vision was an open-air movie theater where moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his own driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue, Camden, New Jersey. The inventor mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, projected onto a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard, and used a radio placed behind the screen for sound.

    According to this account of the drive-in theater’s history, the drive-in opened on Tuesday June 6, 1933 on Crescent Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey, and it cost 25 cents for the car and 25 cents per person to get in.

    Update: Google is now showing a Wikipedia result over the About.com result. This result says: “Hollingshead’s drive-in opened in New Jersey, June 6, 1933, on Admiral Wilson Boulevard at the Airport Circle in Pennsauken, a short distance from Cooper River Park.” It cites The New York Times as the source of this info.

    As Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points out, some people are complaining that Google chose to go with this doodle instead of a D Day Google, as today is also the anniversary of that.

    Google is also plugging IPv6 (the next version of the Internet) from the homepage. Google released the following video about it this week:

    Here’s the page that Google is linking to on IPv6.

  • Peter Carl Fabergé Gets Google Doodle

    Fabergé egg creator Peter Carl Fabergé is being honored today with a Google doodle. The man was born on this day in 1846.

    He was a jeweler from Russia, whose company was commissioned by Tsar Alexander III, to create a jewel-encrusted Easter egg for the Empress Maria, his wife. From then on, he made more eggs over the years for the Tsar and the next Tsar, Nicholas II. That is, according to a well-cited Wikipedia entry.

    Sources for that Wikipedia entry include:

    • Twice Seven: The Autobiography of H C Bainbridge,
    • Fabergé: Goldsmith and Jeweller to the Imperial Court – His Life and Work
    • The History of the House of Fabergé according to the recollections of the senior master craftsman of the firm Franz P. Birbaum
    • The Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs
    • Peter Carl Fabergé – Goldsmith and Jeweller to the Russian Imperial Court – His Life and Work
    • The Art of Carl Fabergé
    • Geza von Habsburg’s Fabergé
    • Masterpieces from the House of Fabergé
    • Faberge’s Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire
    • Faberge and the Russian Master Goldsmiths
    • Carl Fabergé: Goldsmith to the Imperial Court of Russia

    Interestingly enough, Google has no “knowledge panel” for Fabergé, despite this Wikipedia entry,

    • which has information aplenty. Google does still deem the Wikipedia entry the most relevant organic result for “Peter Carl Fabergé”.

    Here’s what Google deems to be the most relevant video for a YouTube search for “Fabergé egg”:

    In case the doodle has gotten you in the mood for some egg browsing, a Google image search for “Fabergé egg” makes for a very colorful experience:

    Peter Carl Faberge's eggs on display in Google Image Search

    It’s unlikely that today’s doodle will be as popular as some of Google’s other, more interactive doodles, such as last week’s Bob Moog doodle. Still, given Google’s penchant for easter eggs (as in fun, hidden items), and the nature of this particular doodle, I would not be surprised if some hidden gems were uncovered throughout the course of the day.

  • ZX Spectrum & St. George’s Day: United In UK Google Doodle

    If you’re Google, and you have two significant historical events that you want to celebrate with your Doodle, which one do you pick? Well, at least for today, the answer is both.

    Today’s awesome Google Doodle is a mash-up, as it celebrates two important occasions. First, the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum, and second, St. George’s Day.

    St. George’s Day is celebrated every year on the accepted date of St. George’s death, April 23rd. St. George is a very important saint in many denominations of Christianity, as he serves as one of the most famous martyrs. He is probably most known for the story of St. George and the Dragon, which records trace back to the 10th or 11th century.

    That, of course, is where the image of the mounted knight and the dragon originates.

    But what’s with the retro look? That’s due to the second component of the celebration – the ZX Spectrum. One of the first real home computers in the UK, the ZX Spectrum was an 8-bit device first launched in 1982. It is oftentimes compared to the Commodore 64 in the U.S. Google explains how today’s Doodle complies with the rules of the ZX Spectrum:

    The ZX Spectrum used only a 15-color palette, with no more than two colors (or any light/dark hue pairs) in any 8-pixel square, so our 256×192-pixel doodle adheres to those constraints. How do we know for sure? A UX designer working with the doodles team wrote a program to validate that the doodle was complying with the rules. It took a surprising 29 revisions to get it right!

    Check out this amazing 80’s ad for the ZX Spectrum:

    Today in the U.S. we don’t have anything this cool – just your everyday plain old Google logo. I’m kind of jealous. Oh well, we did have a pretty sweet Earth Day Doodle on Sunday.

  • Google Hiring Doodler

    Google Hiring Doodler

    Google is now hiring a new Google Doodler, and posted a job description on its Mountain View job site. For those not up to speed on the Doodles, they are variations of the Google logo used to celebrate holidays, significant anniversaries and the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists.

    Google describes the role of the Doodler on its site:

    First impressions matter. Every day, hundreds of millions of online users visit the Google homepage. Yes, to search. But also, to be delighted, informed, and surprised (And maybe even to laugh a little). The Google Doodle makes this possible — it’s the change that is constant on Google.com. As a Product Graphic Designer/Illustrator, more commonly known as a “Doodler,” you have the world’s best platform to showcase your stylistic skills — as well as your sense of humor, love of all things historical and imaginative artistry. From Jules Verne to Pac-Man, you have the reins to our brand and iconic logo and can run free with your innovative ideas. Go forth and doodle!

    Google wasn’t kidding in saying that it offers the world’s best platform in showcasing a Doodler’s artistic skills, and it would be interesting to get a count on the number of applicants for this gig. Those applying need a bachelor’s of fine arts, 4 years relevant experience, and I assume a complete knowledge of all forms of traditional and digital artistry, as the competition will likely get tough. It can be assumed that Google will settle for a Doodler with that rare blend of technical mastery and raw talent.

  • Juan Gris Honored with Google Doodle

    Google has transformed its home page to honor cubist painter Juan Gris. Today marks the anniversary of his birth, 125 years ago. The image is a mishmash of musical instruments, eyes and other cubist figures from Gris’ work.

    Gris was born Jose Victoriano Gonzalez-Perez in Madrid, Spain on March 23, 1887, adopting the pseudonym Juan Gris around 1905. He studied technical drawing in school before moving to Paris in 1906. There he befriended cubist painters Fernand Leger, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso.

    Picasso and Braque are considered the fathers of cubist style, but Gris made it his own, contributing greatly to the art form. His portrait of Picasso in 1912 is considered the first significant cubist painting not done by Picasso or Braque. While Picasso and Braque’s work was monochromatic, Gris chose bright colors and a more expressive style, in the manner of friend Henri Matisse.

    Though widely recognized as a pioneer in cubism, he may have resented that description. Gris did not wish to be aligned with a specific movement, preferring his own creative process above all else. As stated in his “L’Esprit Nouveau” declaration, “Starting from a general type, I want to make something particular and individual.”

    Gris will always be remembered as revolutionary in creative expression. He joins the likes of Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Leonardo da Vinci, whose work has also been featured in a Google doodle.

    @google
    A Googler    Today’s hand-painted doodle celebrates the 125th birthday of Spanish cubist painter Juan Gris http://t.co/9WaoOW07 9 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Dia Do Pai (Father’s Day) Celebrated in Portugal with a New Google Doodle

    google doodle

    Today, March 19, 2012, is Father’s Day in Portugal, Italy and Honduras, and Google submitted a new doodle illustrated in crayon. Father’s day is also taking place in Andorra, Bolivia, Liechtenstein, Spain and Belgium on this day in 2012. A Father’s Day doodle from last year can be seen here:

    Portugal calls Father’s Day “Dia Do Pai,” Spain calls it “Día del Padre” and Italy recognizes “Festa del Papà.”

    Aside from being Father’s Day in Spain, March 19 marks the 200th anniversary of Spain’s Constitution of 1812.

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    The 1812 constitution was one of the most liberal of its time, and established the principles of universal male voting rights, national sovereignty, a constitutional monarchy and freedom of the press, and facilitated land reform and free enterprise.

    Google posted a St. Patrick’s Day doodle over that holiday as well.

  • Doodle 4 Google Winner Announced In Ireland

    Google has been providing young artists with the opportunity to see their creations featured online for several years with their “Doodle 4 Google” contest, which allows children from all over the country to submit original, hand-drawn designs based upon a theme chosen by Google.

    While the U.S. version of the contest is open to entries until March 23rd, Google Ireland has just announced the winner of this year’s competition as 18-year old Patrick Horan, a student from St. Munchin’s College in Limerick. Patrick’s design, titled “Turning Back Time”, was voted best out of 300 entries submitted by students around the country under the theme of “I wish…” and will be featured as the official Google Doodle for a full 24 hours beginning today at www.google.ie.
    Irish Doodle

    “Many of us look towards the stars to make a wish,” Patrick said in his Doodle’s description. “I wish I could turn back time to see our world in past times. My Doodle shows the mechanisms inside a clock slowly turning back the hands of time making my wish come true.”

    Horan was a finalist in last year’s contest with his Doodle, “Letting My Imagination Flow”, which was based on the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh. He was beaten out by 6-year old Layla Karputz, however, who won with her design “Love Google”.

    As part of the prize package, Patrick received not only an award at Google’s headquarters in Dublin, he also got a new laptop for himself and his teacher and €10,000. Interestingly, this is the second winning Google Doodle to emerge from St. Munchin’s, as the 2009 winner–Evan O’Sullivan Glynn–was also a student there.

    This year’s theme for the U.S. contest is “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…” The winning Doodle will appear on the Google homepage on May 18th and the lucky artist will receive a $30,000 scholarship, a $50,000 technology grant for their school, and will be featured on a special edition Crayola box.

  • Akira Yoshizawa Google Doodle Celebrates Father Of Modern Origami

    Japanese artist Akira Yoshizawa is credited with making the craft of paper folding–origami–an art form, and today Google launched their newest doodle, which celebrates what would have been his 101st birthday.

    @marissamayer
    marissamayer    We’re celebrating one of the all-time great origami artists – Akira Yoshizawa – with a logo folded by Robert Lang! http://t.co/2DBYvU5f 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    The self-taught artist worked a succession of menial jobs as a younger man, including one at a machine-tool factory where he used origami to teach geometry to apprentices. He worked on his paper sculptures for years, devising his own techniques and making the craft entirely his own. In the 30’s he joined a Buddhist priesthood, where he trained for two years. He also served in the Japanese medical corps during WWll, where he made origami creations for his patients.

    The artist finally gained recognition in 1952 in Japan, when his 12 figures of the Japanese zodiac were published in the magazine Asahi Graph. He managed to revitalize an ages-old art form that had been long dead and introduce it to a whole new generation. Yoshizawa passed away in 2005 on his 94th birthday.

    Google is famous for their doodles, which often celebrate the lives of artists and musicians. Artist Robert J. Lang conceived and designed the new doodle, and he talks about meeting the iconic artist on Google’s blog. The blog includes downloadable templates that viewers can use to make their own origami art.

    “While there were other Japanese artists who explored their country’s folk art contemporaneously with Yoshizawa, his work inspired the world through a combination of grace, beauty, variety and clarity of presentation. To him, each figure, even if folded from the same basic plan, was a unique object with a unique character.”

    Below is a video of Yoshizawa making his creations.

  • Anti-Google Graffiti In NYC Isn’t Your Normal Google Doodle

    Google gets quite a bit of notoriety for their Google Doodles, but this is one particular Doodle that they will likely not be so proud of.

    According to Jeff Roberts of paidContent, graffiti of Google’s logo has been showing up around New York City with one very shaming alteration: the two Os in “Google” have been replaced by surveillance cameras. The photo below is the picture of the graffiti that Roberts shared earlier today.

    Roberts notes that the logo hasn’t existed at that particular location longer than few weeks and that this bridge seems to attract “tech-themed street art” so it’s unclear if this is a direct reply to Google’s changes to their Privacy Policy or just general discontent aimed at the company. Regardless, whenever a company starts to share the same wall of shame as SOPA (see the message scrawled to the right of the logo), it’s a reliable sign that people are decidedly angry with you.