We love Lucy

Lucille Ball may have been born 100 years ago today, but her jokes are timeless. Having grown up with the comedic genius of “I Love Lucy,” it’s hard to believe that Lucy, Desi, Fred, and Ethel wrapped up the initial series in 1957. Lucy’s creativity, absurdity, and ever-changing facial expressions (especially when she was scarfing down candy, stomping on grapes or touting a new energy drink) have brought joy and laughter to generations of viewers.

We’re incredibly happy to celebrate her birthday with a doodle to highlight her brilliant career as an actress and businesswoman. Through the old-timey TV live on the google.com homepage all day on August 6th, you can flip the six channels for a special Lucy broadcast.

Happy birthday, Lucy — we still love you!

Posted by Jennifer Hom, Doodler

Sculpting an interactive doodle for Alexander Calder's birthday

Our homepage doodle today celebrates the birthday of Alexander Calder, an American artist best known for inventing the mobile.

Last year I wandered into a white room at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago full of Alexander Calder’s delicate “objects,” all beautifully balanced and proportioned, moving gently in the air currents like a whimsical metal forest. Calder took ordinary materials at hand—wire, scraps of sheet metal—and made them into brilliant forms, letting space and motion do the rest. As an engineer, I work with abstractions, too, so this really struck me.

But you kind of want to play with the things. They do not let you do that at museums.

So I coded up a very basic demo of a mobile and showed it to a friend, who showed it to one of our doodlers—and then this amazing thing happened: talented artists and engineers who liked the idea just started to help! What we ended up with is way cooler than anything I could have built on my own. I’m proud to work for a company where an idea like this can actually happen.

This is Google’s first doodle made entirely using HTML5 canvas, so you need to use a modern browser to interact with it. It runs a physics simulation on the mobile’s geometry, and then does realtime 3D rendering with vector graphics. Only recently have browsers advanced to the point where this is possible.

I like to think Calder would have appreciated today’s doodle, since we’re setting up shapes and abstractions and letting them act on their own. Hint: try it out on a laptop with an accelerometer!

Posted by Jered Wierzbicki, Software Engineer

A doodle for an instrumental inventor

The electric guitar brings back memories for me of exchanging riffs with friends and wearing out cassette tapes as I meticulously learned songs. Today, we’re attempting to recreate that experience with a doodle celebrating the birthday of musician and inventor Les Paul.

For the next 24 hours on the Google homepage, you’ll find an interactive, playable logo inspired by the guitar developed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee that made the sound of rock and roll possible.

As well as his guitar work, Les Paul experimented in his garage with innovative recording techniques like multitracking and tape delay. In keeping with this spirit of tinkering, those of you in the U.S. can click the black “compose” button to record your own 30-second track. Just strum the strings or trigger notes with the letters or numbers on your keyboards. Clicking the button again will display a link to share the songs you’ve made. (For example, here’s a little tune I put together.)

If you’re curious, the doodle was made with a combination of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas (used in modern browsers to draw the guitar strings), CSS, Flash (for sound) and tools like the Google Font API, goo.gl and App Engine.

I hope you have as much fun playing with and sharing the doodle as we did making it (special thanks to engineers Kristopher Hom and Joey Hurst and doodle team lead Ryan Germick for their work). Crank up your computer volume and make some music!

Update Jun 17: Wow—in just 48 hours in the U.S., you recorded 5.1 years worth of music—40 million songs—using our doodle guitar. And those songs were played back 870,000 times! We’re glad you enjoyed jamming out last week, and you can keep playing: the Les Paul doodle now has a permanent home.

Update June 9, 8:29pm: Due to popular demand, we're leaving the Les Paul doodle up in the U.S. through Friday for an encore. Thanks for jamming with us! ♫

Posted by Alexander Chen, Designer (and musician), Creative Lab

And the 2011 U.S. Doodle 4 Google winner is...

With more than 5 million votes cast, the anticipation has been building in this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition. Today, the wait is finally over—seven-year-old Matteo Lopez of South San Francisco, Calif. is the national winner with his imaginative doodle, entitled “Space Life.”

Matteo, who attends Monte Verde Elementary School, submitted his design around his dream to “... become an astronaut and explore space life.” Matteo’s doodle of the Google logo artfully depicts a trip to space, walking on the moon, and even making friends with aliens. Matteo has already soared to great heights, rising to the top of the more than 107,000 submissions sent in from all over the country.

Matteo’s use of markers and colored pencils has won him a $15,000 college scholarship, a netbook computer and a $25,000 technology grant for his school. Matteo’s doodle will also be featured on the U.S. Google.com homepage tomorrow, May 20, for millions of people to enjoy.

With more doodles than we’ve ever received before, the crop of designs for this year’s theme “What I’d like to do someday...” was incredibly creative across all grade groups. In addition to selecting Matteo, more than 5 million public votes also helped us determine the three national finalists, each of which will receive a $5,000 college scholarship:

• Grades 4-6: Joseph Eugene Miller, Grade 4, Andersen Elementary School, Wilmington, N.C., for his doodle entitled “My galaxy.” Joseph says, “I chose to draw this picture because when I grow up I would like to go to space. At night when I look at the stars they persuade me to go to space and explore the stars, planets and our galaxy.”
  
  
• Grades 7-9: Justas Varpucanskis, Grade 7, Mokena Junior High School, Mokena, Ill., for his doodle entitled “The Majestic Sea.” Justas says, “What I'd like to do someday is to take part in the conservation of our underwater universe. There is no doubt the last decades were an environmental catastrophe. The underwater world is a haven for many sea creatures, thus being crucial to our existence. We need to preserve our underwater ecosystem.”
  
  
• Grades 10-12: Hannah Newsom, Grade 11, Glenwood Homeschool, Fayetteville, Ark., for her doodle entitled “Illustration.” Hannah says, “Someday I would like to illustrate storybooks. I want my work to make stories come alive in the imagination with color, and light, and emotion deepening the imagination of the reader, I would want to brighten the world of the viewer and fill it with wonder and delight.”

As part of today’s announcement at an event in our New York office, all 40 Regional Finalists enjoyed doodle classes with our doodle team and mingled with some of this year’s guest judges who helped us select the top doodles. In addition to the fun on their trip to the New York office, all of the top 40 Regional Finalists will have their work publicly displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York through June 16 and at SFMOMA in San Francisco from May 20 through July 19.

Thanks to all of you who voted and helped us select this year's winner. Even more important, thank you to all of the students who submitted entries—it was an especially difficult task to select the winning doodles from among the amazing entries this year. Keep on doodling and we’ll see you next year!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Product Management

The polls are open—vote for your favorite doodle!

Today, we’re thrilled to introduce the 40 Regional Finalists for this year’s U.S. Doodle 4 Google contest. This year we had a record number of submissions—more than 107,000 from talented student artists from every state across the country. We were amazed and delighted by not only the quantity of submissions but the caliber of this year’s entries.

For the second year in a row, we’re celebrating these winners in their very own schools. From Stilwell, Okla. to Woodinville, Wash., today Googlers are visiting the schools of our Regional Finalists to celebrate their incredible artwork along with thousands of their teachers, friends and classmates.

Our doodle team, volunteer Googlers and incredibly talented Guest Judges helped us determine the 40 Regional Finalists. Whoopi Goldberg, Evan Lysacek, Michael Phelps and Jim Davis (just to name a few) lent a hand to help find the cream of the artistic crop. Now comes one of the most exciting parts of the contest—your votes! From now until May 13 at 11:59 p.m. PDT, you can cast your online votes for your favorite Regional Finalist’s doodle (one vote for each of the four grade groups). On May 19, we’ll announce the national winner at our awards ceremony in New York City. The national winner will receive a $15,000 college scholarship and $25,000 towards a new computer lab for his or her school, and the winning design will appear on google.com on Friday, May 20. All of the top 40 Regional Finalists will also have their work publicly displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and at SFMOMA in San Francisco.

Our top 40 Regional Finalists weren’t the only winners today—we’d also like to congratulate the 400 State Finalists. Last but not least, we’d like to take the time to thank the teachers, parents and administrators who encouraged their students to dream big and put those ambitions on paper. Without you, this contest wouldn’t have been possible.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Product Management

Lights, camera, doodle!

Charlie Chaplin wasn’t just the greatest star of the silent film era; he also wrote, directed and produced more than 80 movies in a career that spanned decades and included such masterpieces as The Kid, The Gold Rush and Modern Times. He scored many of his pictures as well, and on at least one occasion served as an on-set hairdresser.

Chaplin is also one of my creative heroes. Despite being an art-obsessed high schooler preemptively bored by anything in black and white, I borrowed a VHS tape of Chaplin’s work from the library on a lark. It’s not an exaggeration to say watching it changed my life. I laughed, I cried—I cried from laughter. For the first time I realized the power of visual storytelling.

We sometimes tell small stories with Google’s logo, but for Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin’s 122nd birthday tomorrow, April 16, the Doodle team created something extra fun. For the next 36 hours the Google homepage will pay homage to Charlie Chaplin’s creative legacy with our first-ever live action video doodle.

The simple, silent short film stars the entire Doodle team (with fellow doodler Mike Dutton sporting that famous mustache, hat and eyeliner) and was shot on location in Niles, Calif., the setting of several of Chaplin’s early classics including The Tramp. Niles is also home to our advisers for this doodle, the ever-helpful Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.

True pieces of art, Chaplin’s films still feel fresh today even though some of them are nearly a century old. We hope that our homage gets people talking about his work and the many virtues of silent film.



As a bonus, check out some of these fun behind-the-scenes shots:



Posted by Ryan Germick, Doodler, Writer, Director, Keystone Cop

100 years of celebrating women

(Cross-posted on the LatLong Blog)

As today’s doodle shows, we’re very excited to celebrate the centenary of International Women’s Day. Late last month we teamed up with Women for Women International to announce the Join me on the Bridge campaign, a celebration of the achievements of women taking place on bridges around the world. Since then almost 300 bridge events in more than 50 countries have been added to the map. I’ve found it inspiring to watch all of those little red pins pop up, knowing that each of them represents a group of women and their supporters coming together to let the world know how far we’ve come.

In addition to the flagship events happening throughout the day on the Brooklyn Bridge (New York), the Millennium Bridge (London) and the Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco), women and men are gathering in places as far-flung as Kabul, Afghanistan, La Paz, Bolivia and Sydney, Australia.

It’s not too late to join the celebrations and show your support—simply find an event on the map. Remember to “check in” to the event on the map before the end of the day, and if you have photos or videos of an event, it’s easy to share them with the world: just click on the pin for the event you attended (or want to support virtually) and start uploading.

We hope you’ll also consider donating to one of the more than 40 incredible women’s organizations participating in our celebration. You can learn more and make a donation at google.com/iwd2011.

Plus, when you use Google Maps on March 8, you’ll notice that Pegman, Street View’s trusted guide, has a new friend. He invited his colleague Pegwoman to join him on the map today to celebrate International Women’s Day!

Posted by Claire Hughes Johnson, VP, Global Online Sales, and Chair, Google Women’s Professional Community

Happy birthday Will Eisner

From time to time we invite guests to post about topics of interest and we’re pleased to have Scott McCloud join us here. Scott is a comics artist with special ties to Google—he illustrated the Chrome comic book and is a 2011 U.S. Doodle 4 Google judge. He also helped in the design of today’s doodle in honor of Will Eisner, which is running in many countries including the U.S. In this post, Scott shares his thoughts on Will Eisner’s legacy. -Ed.

Will Eisner, American comics pioneer and creator of The Spirit, was born on March 6, 1917. He would have been 94 today.

Many of us who knew him still find it hard to believe he’s gone. He died in 2005, but for six decades, Eisner was a participant in, and inspiration for, much of the best in American comics, as well as a friend and mentor to multiple generations of comics artists.

Eisner influenced comics in dozens of ways. In the ‘40s, Eisner’s The Spirit—a seven-page newspaper feature—introduced an arsenal of visual storytelling techniques still used generations later, and provided an early testing ground for future comics stars including Jack Kirby and Jules Feiffer. (The Spirit also began a tradition of pictorially-integrated logos—inspiring today's snazzy rooftop doodle!)

Eisner was one of the first cartoonists to understand the power of visual education, and wrote eloquently about the process of making comics in Comics and Sequential Art (1985) and Graphic Storytelling (1996). As early as 1941, he publicly advocated treating comics as a distinct literary and artistic form, and—nearly four decades later—was instrumental in the rise of the graphic novel in America, beginning with A Contract with God in 1978.

For most of his career, Eisner was years, even decades, ahead of the curve. I saw him debating artists and editors half his age, and there was rarely any question who the youngest man in the room was. It helped that he never stood on ceremony. Everyone was his peer, regardless of age or status. None of us called him “Mr. Eisner.” He was just “Will.”

Eisner lived well into his eighties; long enough to see an industry award named after him. Inevitably, the prospect loomed that Will Eisner himself might win an “Eisner Award” leading to some awkward choices; Hall of Fame, maybe? Lifetime Achievement?

His only suggestion was “Most Promising Young Cartoonist.”

And so he was.

Posted by Scott McCloud

Happy birthday from 20,000 leagues under the sea

It wasn’t very difficult for something to spark my imagination when I was a child—whether it was a pile of leaves or a couch of stackable cushions, just about anything could jump-start my creativity. My first encounter with Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, however, sent my imagination into hyper drive.

I first found the novel while browsing through a random aisle in my local library. The cover was dark, murky and a little worn—but it was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen. A pair of old-fashioned divers drag their feet over the ocean floor, watching a school of fish drift by. They don’t seem to notice the twisting silhouette of a monster inching toward them.

The cover alone pulled me in, but I didn’t want to spoil all of the possible story lines by actually reading the book. Looking back, I realize that what fascinated me most was the unknown: a creative spark and the imaginative exploration that followed. Since then, I’ve become more familiar with his work and still believe that exploration is the essence of Verne’s novels. His stories pull the readers into a world filled with infinite potential—be it in the clouds, on land or under the sea.

Today’s doodle, celebrating Verne’s 183rd birthday, tries to capture that sense of adventure and exploration. Using CSS3 (and with help from our resident tech wizards Marcin Wichary and Kris Hom), the doodle enables anyone to navigate the Nautilus (nearly) 20,000 leagues with the simple pull of a lever. And for those using devices with built-in accelerometers and the latest versions of Google Chrome or Firefox, it’s even simpler—just tilt your device in the direction you want to explore and the Nautilus will follow.

So voyage below (and above) the waves to see what you can discover... just make sure to keep an eye out for the giant squid.

Update Feb 9, 8:44 AM: You can now explore the ocean from our Jules Verne doodle in full view and HD.

Posted by Jennifer Hom, Google Doodler