Doodling With Google's Dennis Hwang

Last nite, I attended the Google Web Group Open House where Dennis Hwang, the official Google Doodler, presented on some of his work over the past 7 years at Google. He is a fine arts major and started with the company as one of its earlier employees. He explained that Sergey and Larry were looking to have a logo doodle created just before they took off to their annual pilgrimmage to Burning Man, and someone mentioned that he was a fine arts major, and they asked him to create it. They had created the very first doodle themselves. For one of his initial logo designs, he requested of Sergey and Larry to purchase a dozen or so stock images. Sergey apparently said no citing the $100 a pop as too expensive and suggested that Dennis take to the parking lot with some bread and a digital camera to photograph the resident pigeons. Dennis did but later realized that Sergey mistook the doves in the parking lot for pigeons. Sergey eventually allowed him to buy only one image.

Google creates holiday logos for all its country sites which are around 158 or so. He also showcased some of the logos which never made the cut for various reasons such as the possibility of offending someone, innacurate depiction of something, or simply cannibalism as in the case of the one depicting a snowman eating his own nose like a snowcone.

Google apparently receives a lot a feedback on their logos from people who have issues with a logo. Geo-specific holiday logos are created for the specific country site only. For instance, French only holiday logo would not be placed on other country sites. As Dennis pointed out, it is sometimes challenging to come up with original creative ideas for the same holiday year after year. He now shares his doodling duties with another designer. See also http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2004/06/oodles-of-doodles.html.