Fishburn Hedges

13.01.2012

One of this week’s Google Doodles caught my eye as it celebrated the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno, the founder of modern Geology. It got me thinking about the beginnings of the ‘Doodle’, and how they came to be so popular, usually putting a smile on people’s faces but occasionally provoking angry discussion. One thing for sure is that Google is a brilliant self publicist and through revealing notable people or events that you’ve never heard of before it keeps our sense of wonder at the internet search engine alive.

Everyone has their favourite, one of mine being an interactive game celebrating Pacman’s 30th birthday back in May 2010. Doodles weren’t always that way of course and have become more complex and abstract over the years since they first appeared back in 1998.

Though Google itself was a revolutionary search engine to begin with, its co-founder Sergey Brin believes that it was their first Doodle that set them apart from their competitors, by giving them a playful ‘human’ side. Ironically, it was created to indicate to users that both the founders were in fact ‘out of the office’ partying at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. The logo was altered slightly to show a stick man, with his arms raised up, behind the middle ‘O’.

Since that point the Doodle has never really looked back. Over 1000 have been created to date. Although the Doodle team of 30 specialist graphic designers are open about the selection process, they never reveal how many are made throughout the year saying they prefer to keep a ‘sense of surprise’ for users before they appear. They avoid contentious issues, religious holidays are not mentioned, though they do appear to support the sciences quite strongly, with doodles of DNA, fossil finds, notable scientists and climate change events such as Earth Day. The political vote is also endorsed with election days marked in countries with variations of the ‘O’ turned into a ballot paper marked with a cross.

They are possibly the only brand in the world which changes their logo to faded grey as a mark of respect after a major disaster, once again showing their dextrous ability to give a giant multinational corporation a compassionate, human side.

They do sometimes miss the mark, as a famous example from 2010 shows. Here Google angered patriotic Americans as they were supposedly honouring US Veterans day by showing an American flag replacing the ‘L’ in the doodle, lit from the side by a rising sun. This was one of their more simple designs, where the flag covered the top of the red ‘e’, with the pointed tail looking very much like the bottom of a crescent moon. Some believed this referenced the holy symbol of Islam (the crescent moon and star) and began a stream of abuse towards the search engine who they believed were pro-Islam and had deliberately designed a deeply offensive image and spoiled an American tradition to boot!

What is probably unknown to many is that since 2001, Google has been trying to patent the ‘Doodle’, as a method of driving traffic to their home page and to highlight the wealth of information found through their search engines. They finally gained this in March 2011 and debatably founded one of the most unique marketing and self publicising tools ever created on the internet. Whilst most companies see their logo as set in stone so to be easily and ever recognisable to their markets, Google’s brand success could simply come down to their logos constant change and evolution. They are masters at showing their innovative and creative passion through their design.

This shows in the headlines Doodles have generated over the years, as well as rises in online traffic too. Aside from the coverage, each Doodle generates word-of-mouth advertising for the institutions, charities, museums, campaigns, sporting events, companies or people that their images highlight. Each picture is also discussed on social media. On Wednesday for example, the Geology Society of America and the British Geological Survey (to name a few) both tweeted where to read more about their founding father, further driving traffic towards their sites.

Now that Doodle is synonymous with Google and to the billions of worldwide users, there is the possibility that what started off as a harmless piece of fun might become problematic. What if the Doodle team are biased towards particular themes or people and are boycotted in protest? One blogger pointed out recently that as of April last year, out of 160 notable people they honoured only 16 percent of these were women. They looked like they were testing their boundaries in June last year with the appearance of a rainbow ‘mini Doodle’ next to the search box which was only seen when searching for specific terms in connection with the Gay and Lesbian Pride month.

The Doodle can still be fun and playful, but now their 30 man team is under pressure to reflect the diverse interests of the entire planet who are all requesting, petitioning and demanding that a Doodle be created for their particular cause.

Anyone can submit a request for a Doodle, and they often run competitions for children (e.g. Doodle4Google), but in 2009 the company invited several prominent US artists to create doodles for free for their homepage. Many of the artists invited saw this as exploitative, despite the exposure they would receive, because at that time Google’s profits were already over $5bn. Clearly it is a very fine line between supporting their own views, encouraging creativity but not offending their users or impinging on copyright by designing images themselves.

One thing is certain at the beginning of 2012, especially with the Olympics just around the corner there is immense potential to use Doodles creatively. They spark debate and generate web traffic, but perhaps most importantly, they should prompt companies into questioning whether their logo is still effective for them, or does it need modernization?

Other contentious doodles:

‘Ida’ doodle in May 2009 – a doodle illustrating what some scientists believe to be the missing link in human evolution, a fossil found called darwinius masillae, otherwise known as Ida. This image caused a huge stir amongst the Creationists in America.

Joan Miró doodle in April 2006 – a doodle created to celebrate 113 years after the birth of Joan Miró, by their founder Illustrator Dennis Hwang who compiled several themes of Miró into the Google letters. The Miró family immediately objected as the doodle violated the artist’s copyright plus his moral rights. Google denied it was a copyright violation, but removed the picture quickly.

Posted by Lucy Preston