The Evolution of Google Logo
What many don't know is that there's a backstory to the most well-known design on the internet.
Throughout the past two decades, the Google logo has been iconic and easy to recognize. And across all of its evolutions, it has stayed simple.
3.5 billion Google searches happen each day. With research like this, it's not unlikely that the average person might see the Google logo anywhere from one to 30 times per day.
What many don't
know is that there's a backstory to the most well-known design on the internet.
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1996: The First Google Logo
The logo
featured an image of a hand and the company's original name, BackRub, in red
font.
Larry Page and
Sergey Brin originally called their web crawler "BackRub." Brin and
Page chose this name because the engine's main function was to search through
the internet's backlinks.
By 1997 they'd
changed the company's name to much less creepy "Google" a misspelling
of "googol" a Latin term that literally means 10 to the 100th power.
The idea behind the name was that Google's search engine could quickly provide
users with large quantities, or googols, of results.
1998: First real Google logo
Some
sources says credit Page with the creation of the first Google logo, while
others say Brin designed it with a free image editor called GIMP. Whomever it
was, their design wasn't exactly the most glazed.
Fun
fact, An exclamation point was supposedly included in Google's rebranded design
because Yahoo!'s logo also had this punctuation. All those tech companies
followed each other's leads back then.
1999-2010: Ruth Kedar's logo designs
A mutual friend introduced Brin and Page to Stanford assistant professor Ruth Kedar.they asked Kedar if she'd design a few prototypes.
She
started with a mostly black logo using the Adobe Garamond typeface. She also
removed the exclamation point that was in the original logo.
Page
and Brin like this logo because the mark in the middle looked like a Chinese
finger trap, Kedar says.
Her
next attempt used the Catull typeface (which should look familiar). The logo
was meant to trigger accuracy, like a target.
Then she got a bit more playful, experimenting with color and engage Os. Those Os ended up becoming the basis for the Os at the bottom of every search engine results page.
With
the crosshairs and the magnifying glass, Brin and Page thought this design was
a little visually overwhelming.
The
next few iterations are more like the Google logo we know today. These designs
feel younger and less serious than the others.
Kedar
makes the letters pop off the page with shadowing and thicker lines.
By
the eighth design it was the simplest yet. Ultimately, Kedar wanted to show
Google's potential to become more than just a search engine. She also changed
the traditional order of the primary colors to reemphasize how untraditional
Google was.
This
version colors and the slanted angling make it feel youthful and energetic.
The
final design is one of the most minimal. It was Google's official logo from
1999 to 2010.
On
May 6, 2010, Google updated its logo, changing the "o" from yellow to
orange and removing the shadowing.
2015: A new logo for Google
In
2015, designers from across Google met in New York City for a whole week design
sprint to produce a new logo and branding.
After
that sprint, Google's logo changed dramatically. The company preserved its
distinctive (blue-red-orange-blue-green-red) pattern, but changed the typeface
from Catull to the custom schoolbook inspired Product Sans.
At
the same time, Google also rolled out several variations on its logo, including
the rainbow "G" that represents the smartphone app and the favicon
for Google websites, and a microphone for voice search.
The
new logo might look simple, but the transformation was significant. Catull the
former typeface has serifs, the small lines that embellish the main vertical
and horizontal strokes of some letters. Serif typefaces are less versatile than
their sans-serif typefaces.
The
logo is also meant to look young, fun, and unthreatening "I'm not like
other massive tech corporations, I'm a cool massive tech corporation."
A Dynamic Logo
Google's
logo is now dynamic. When you begin a voice search on your phone or tablet,
you'll see the Google dots bouncing in anticipation of your query.
As
you speak, those dots transform into a planer that responds to your voice. And
once you've finished talking, the planer changes back into dots that ripple as
Google finds your results.
A
Google design team blog post says:
"A
full range of expressions were developed including listening, thinking,
replying, incomprehension, and confirmation, While their movements might seem
spontaneous, their motion is rooted in consistent paths and timing, with the
dots moving along geometric arcs and following a standard set of snappy easing
curves."
launching and Growth of the Google
Doodle
In
1998, Google started the Google Doodle which is a temporary modification of the
traditional Google logo.
The
first Google Doodle originated in 1998. Page and Sergey were attending the
Burning Man festival. that's when they got the idea to put a stick figure
drawing behind the logo's second O.
In
2000, Brin and Sergey asked the intern Dennis Hwang to come up with a doodle
for Bastille Day. Users loved it so much that they appointed Dennis "chief
doodler."