This year, Google changed their logo quite radically, while the colors of the letters are similar to the ones in older logos, the font no longer features its classic curves. The company changed the logo so it would be more easily adaptable for digital media and different screen sizes. Even with that change, we will still see many Google Doodles, these are drawings that somehow resemble the logo and some of them might feature some interactivity. What started as an inside joke in 1998 has evolved throughout these years into digital art pieces that commemorate some important people or special dates.
When we think of people working at Google, we might think of teams of engineers or programmers intervening into one of the different fields related to the company, and those include much more than software, as some of the side projects of Google’s parent company Alphabet have to do with robotics, automobiles and life sciences, to name a few. Still, there’s a group of designers, artists and engineers who are dedicated to creating the Google Doodles, and this particular job is not as easy as it might sound. Time interviewed some members of that team to find out more about this job. Jordan Thompson, an engineer who got recently transferred from another department, mentioned that the hardest part of this job is the “hard deadline”, as Doodles need to be ready in a very specific day, otherwise it might not launch or it might launch a year later. Most of the other jobs at Google don’t require a specific day for their delivery.
Most of the team would agree that meeting that deadline is one of the hardest aspects of the job. Leon Hong, an artist of the Google Doodle team said “As an artist, trying to put something on paper within a certain time frame is very difficult”, and it gets even more difficult if we consider that the Doodles have been getting more complex and more interactive over time. Jonathan Shneier, an engineer of this team also mentioned that it is hard to go from a vague concept to a clever idea and a prototype on such a tight schedule. The process usually includes some brainstorming with thousands of ideas, which would then be narrowed down to feasible topics that represent what Google stands for, including cultural diversity. Even when they have a Doodle almost ready, it might not be shown in account of an event that had occurred around that date and might make the Doodle seem inappropriate. Still, this job seems to be very rewarding, Hong mentioned “The best part is being able to learn a lot of new things on the job, being able to research different topics, and learning about Beethoven’s life, or all of these other people”, so the team must be having fun while learning a little bit more every day.