On August 30, 1998, Google employees ditched work and headed to Burning Man, the hippie gathering in Black Rock Desert, NV. They left a cryptic message on Google's homepage: Burning Man's symbol behind their logo. So rose the first Google doodle. "There was no master plan for doodles at that point," leader of the Google doodle team Ryan Germick told Time Magazine.
Google doodles have since evolved, playing on designer Ruth Kedar's official red, blue, yellow, and green Catull typeface logo. From slight alterations to the search engine's homepage, to elaborate interactive and animated graphics, we give you The Best Art and Design Google Doodles Ever Created.
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Claude Monet
Vincent van Gogh
Leonardo Da Vinci
Jackson Pollock
Shepard Fairey
Bob Ross
Auguste Rodin
Mary Blair
Will Eisner
Louis Daguerre
Joze Plecnik
Lola Mora
Edward Gorey
Rene Magritte
Antoni Gaudi
Giorgio Vasari
Rembrandt
Marimekko
Maria Sibylla Merian
Diego Rivera
Mies Van Der Rohe
Juan Gris
Robert Indiana
Robert Doisneau
Akira Yoshizawa
Peter Carl Faberge
Gio Pomodoro
Frida Kahlo
Alphonse Mucha
Eadweard Muybridge
8. Eadweard Muybridge
Date: April 9, 2012
While Google's doodle for Muybridge's 182nd birthday is not so exciting at rest, when the graphic was clicked, the horses galloped into motion. A British photographer, Muybridge combined his still images to make sophisticated flipbooks that were essentially the first moving pictures. This Google doodle mimics his work Sallie Gardner at a Gallop.
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Gustav Klimt
Takashi Murakami
Keith Haring
5. Keith Haring
Date: May 4, 2012
One of the '80s downtown artists in New York City, Keith Haring depicted the vibrant street culture of the city in his graphics. His technicolor works featured cartoonish figures that danced and grooved across his canvases. Google used Haring's iconic 2D figures to spell out the company's name. The animated drawings swayed across the screen with the same dynamism that Haring brought to his drawings.
Brancusi
Alexander Calder
3. Alexander Calder
Date: July 22, 2011
Calder's Google doodle is a whimsical delight. Celebrating the inventor of the mobile, the doodle shows the company's logo as one of the artist's hanging designs. The interactive doodle spun like a true mobile when scrolled over with a curser.
Martha Graham
2. Martha Graham
Date: May 11, 2011
The rebel Martha Graham broke with the strict tradition of 19th century ballet, essentially inventing modern dance and setting the stage for what we know as contemporary dance today. To celebrate the dancer's 117th birthday, Google created a seamless animation of a woman dancing to form the company's letters.
image via
Saul Bass
1. Saul Bass
Date: May 8, 2013
Graphic design master Saul Bass designed film credits and movie posters for the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. His posters look like Kandinsky's woodcut prints for Der Blaue Reiter or Banksy's stencil graffiti. For Bass's 93rd birthday in May, Google's doodle mimicked the designer's signature style, with an animation that looked like one of Bass's opening credits.