Dennis Hwang: The 'unknown' Google logo artist
Have you ever wondered who creates the changing Google logos that reflect public holidays, events in history, birthdays, sports and more?
Twenty-eight year-old Dennis Hwang is the talented artist who was hired by Larry and Sergey after they found out he was an art major in college.
His logo-changing work now only accounts for about 20% of his time – he’s in charge of all the Google webmasters – but it’s still a very satisfying yet demanding part of his role.
Recently, for example, one bright idea landed him with a lot of work: to do individual designs for each of the 32 qualifying World Cup teams.
The logos also link to a search. I’ve only occasionally clicked on the logo but its an interesting feature:
"Sometimes we unfortunately take some sites down, so we
have to cycle through different search queries midday," Hwang said.
"But, yeah, it’s kind of the fun aspect of it that users can do more
research about a topic or find out more about it on their own if
they’re not as familiar about what we’re recognizing."
He meets several times a year with some Google staff to decide what events to cover.
"We talk about interesting holidays that are coming up, or
various international holidays or any current events or news events
that we think are cool and geeky or ‘Google-y’ in some sense and then
we just sort of give it a go," he said.
