Webmaster Dennis Hwang dashes off those fanciful logos--and helps keep the brand fresh
Dennis Hwang's drawings are viewed by nearly 180 million people a day. He's one of the most important graphic designers in the business world. And yet the mild-mannered 29-year-old keeps a low profile--and devotes only a small fraction of his time to his art.
Hwang is the Google doodler, the man whose hand-drawn alterations of the search engine's logo commemorate holidays, artists' birthdays, and other random events that the company deems important. In June, 2004, a French astronomer sent Hwang an e-mail explaining that within 24 hours Venus would pass in front of the sun--the first time it had happened in 122 years. Quickly, Hwang mocked up a version of the Google logo where the second "O" had become a sun with a black spot on it representing Venus. He showed the design to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's co-founders, who liked it. "We are a geeky company, so it was an easy sell," says Hwang. "Within a few hours, I had posted the doodle and we were alerting the world to this cool event."
A former art-computer science double-major at Stanford University, Hwang is also now Google's Webmaster. He devotes 80% to 90% of his time to managing the team of 30 people who maintain Google's Web pages in more than 100 languages. His doodles, about 50 a year, are dashed off using an electronic tablet that translates his scrawlings onto his screen.
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