This is an image of the first ever Google Doodle celebrating Burning Man festival, wh
ich was used on August 30, 1998.
A doodle is a drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of haphazard and abstract lines, generally without ever lifting the drawing device from the paper, in which case it is usually called a ‘scribble’. Many of us doodle during meetings or lectures. Doodling has become synonymous with day-dreaming. But there’s a plus side to doodling: when we doodle, we do it semi-consciously in which we actually access our most creative self and come up with brilliant ideas for even our most troubling problems. Guys don’t give up doodling.
A Google Doodle is a special, temporary change made in the logo on Google’s homepage. This intended change is made to celebrate holidays, events, achievements and people. The first Google Doodle was in honor of the Burning Man Festival of 1998, this is one of the world’s biggest and most popular festivals and takes place once a year in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. This Google Doodle was designed by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Subsequent Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor, until Page and Brin asked public relations officer Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day in 2000. Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries/lands to the French National Day, which is celebrated on the 14th of July each year. From that point onward, Doodles have been organized and published by a team of employees termed “Doodlers”.
The doodle has become a foundation on the homepage and part of Google’s identity. At Google, they now have a full-time staff of resident artists, who are called doodlers, who help to create images, metaphors, smiles seen by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. According to Google job postings, doodle candidates have the world’s best platform to showcase their stylistic skills, their sense of humor, and love of all things – it can be historical, geographical, current affairs anything. Google nurtures talent and imaginative artistry in the doodlers. These are original artwork; quirky and fanciful doodles have been a daily feature of Google’s home page for more than 15 years now. All the doodlers get assigned certain days, but they also have pet projects in which they work on ideas they feel strongly about. They can animate on those strong ideas of theirs.
One of the Doodle paid tribute to silent film star Charlie Chaplin, with this short video, which celebrated what would’ve been his 122nd birthday. Featuring a Chaplin-like actor, the film sees him read a Google newspaper, relate with a Google logo and attempt to draw a Google Doodle himself, albeit unsuccessfully! I think that was one of the best Doodles!
To celebrate the 100th Tour de France, the Google Doodle team developed this elaborate design, depicting a cyclist sporting a Gallic moustache and Le Tour’s famous maillot jaune yellow jersey, with his wheels going like the clappers.
Do you know Google holds competitions for school students to create their own Google doodles, referred to as “Doodle 4 Google”? Winning doodles go onto the Doodle 4 Google website, where the public can vote for the winner, who wins a trip to the Googleplex (it is the corporate headquarters complex of Google in California) and the hosting of the winning doodle for 24 hours on the Google website.
The competition originated in the United Kingdom, and has since expanded to the United States and other countries. The competition was also held in Ireland in 2008. Google announced a Doodle 4 Google competition for India in 2009 and the winning doodle was displayed on the Google India homepage on November 14th. A similar competition held in Singapore based on the theme “Our Singapore” was launched in January 2010 and the winning entry was chosen from over 30,000 entries received. The winning design will be shown on Singapore’s National Day on Google Singapore’s homepage. It was held again in 2015 in Singapore and was themed ‘Singapore: The next 50 years’.
Google Doodles introduce different culture to world through festival doodles. The doodles announce events around the world, special doodles are designed for Olympics, Soccer World Cup, Cricket World Cup etc. The Google user can recognize what is going around and what is the specialty of the day. If you want to know more about the event, you just need to have a single click and Google will take you to the pages in the ‘Knowledge graph’ for what doodle is meant for. For example, on 22nd June 2013, Mount Fuji was raised to the status of World Heritage site at UNESCO meeting which took place in Cambodia. Google celebrated the joy of this move by UNESCO and shared the happiness with Japanese people with a special Google Doodle on Japan homepage. This is how the moment you are on the Google site, the doodle updates on the specialty of the day!!!
