Designing Google's Logo

Wired has an article about the design of Google's logo and its iterations. "Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo, shows the iterations that led to the instantly recognizable primary colors and Catull typeface that define the Google brand. Kedar met Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page through a mutual friend nine years ago at Stanford University, where she was an assistant professor."

In the process, Ruth used a lot of symbols: from a pattern that suggests the infinite to interlocking rings that symbolize the power of search to transgress cultures, from a happy magnifying glass to sheer playfulness. "By taking out the magnifying glass, Kedar opens up the logo to signify that Google can become much more than just a search engine. By playing with the angles and colors of the letters, she tries to make clear that Google isn't a square corporation."

Ruth Kedar explains that she chose the Catull typeface because "Catull borrows elements from traditional writing instruments such as the quill and the chisel with a modern twist. Search, by nature, is an activity that requires we look into the past. Therefore Catull's historical ties seemed appropriate, as did the bridging between the old analog world and the new emerging digital era."

As you can see, the simple and cheerful Google logo hides a lot of interesting ideas and it's still relevant to the company, even if it's no longer just a search engine.

Before adopting a professional logo, Google used a logo created by Sergey Brin in GIMP. "Tinkering one day with a graphics program called GIMP, Sergey created a color rendering of the Google letters with an exclamation point at the end, mimicking Yahoo! He seemed quite proud of the new logo, which was composed of kindergarten-style block letters in primary colors. But it wasn't the look that meant the most to him. He was pleased that he had been able to teach himself how to use GIMP, free software that was tricky to employ," writes David A. Vise in The Google Story.

Intuitive Mobile Search

Image licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by Mac Funamizu.

Mac Funamizu imagines a more intuitive way to search by just pointing at objects or selecting text. An Internet-enabled mobile device that incorporates a camera, scanner, GPS could make use of services like Google Maps or an improved image search to recognize objects and deliver useful information about them.

"You can use it when you want to know a car model, an insect name, what kind of food is served at a restaurant and how much, who built a bridge, etc. etc. But as a designer myself, I hope it's able to tell me a name of a font of the type I see, the size, color (in RGB), and so on," explains Mac.

There are already commercial applications like GeoVector 3D Search that let users access data about some points of interest, but this could be extended to non-local search. GeoVector "currently provides products and services which significantly simplify local searches, allowing users to point their mobile device toward objects of interest to access information about them. Users can point and click with their mobile phone the way a computer user navigates using a mouse," according to a press release.

Google tests introducing barcodes in print ads to increase their accountability. "2D barcodes (...) allow readers to click on interesting print ads with their cellphones and seamlessly connect to relevant online content." A barcode could encode URLs or any other short text. "When you capture a picture of it with your cellphone, special decoding software reads the encoded information, and prompts your phone's browser to visit a URL." Barcodes are very popular in Japan, where a lot of mobile phones include decoding software. "Japan, the first country with a highly developed 3G network and high usage of the mobile internet, was also the country where telecoms like NTTDoCoMo and KDDI achieved a breakthrough by bringing QR code readers to mobile phones. Today QR Codes are so pervasive in Japan that it's almost impossible without seeing one. You can find them in advertisements, mobile campaigns, on maps, in magazines, on billboards etc. and nobody want to miss them anymore."

Point-and-click is an intuitive way to interact with objects and obtain information from search engines, but it's necessary to be able to analyze images and recognize objects, the same way barcode decoders transform codes into text. Google's acquisition of Neven Vision is a step in this direction.