黃正穆 谷歌徽標(biāo)背后的男人

Ever wonder who creates the beautiful logos which you see daily on the Google homepage commemorating holidays and events？ It’s Dennis Hwang， the official logo designer for Google， who creates those Google Doodles.

Dennis Hwang’s drawings are viewed by nearly 180 million people a day. A daily pleasure for many Internet searchers， his ever-changing logos give the search giant’s homepage even more appeal. He’s one of the most important graphic designers in the business world. And yet the mild-mannered29-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.

Hwang’s whimsical designs serve a serious business function. Google’s multi-colored Google logo is just as important a branding device as Apple’s apple. As Google balloons into a powerful and controversial tech behemoth， the doodles humanize the company. With their rough， hand-drawn look， they hark back to the company’s experimental， nimble， intellectual， and fanciful startup legacy. “The doodles let Google wink at their audience，” says Bill Gardner， founder of LogoLounge.com， a site that covers trends in corporate logo design.

Born in Knoxville， Tenn.， Hwang also spent part of his youth living in a Seoul suburb. As a junior at Stanford in 2000， his residential adviser asked him to be an assistant Webmaster at a then-little-known search engine startup named Google. He started as a summer intern and then worked 40 hours a week his senior year while completing his undergraduate degree.

By that time， Google had already experimented with doodles. The first one was done by Brin and Page in 1999 when they left for the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Hwang started doodling almost by accident. “It was simply because I was an art major in a very small company，” he recalls. His first design honored Bastille Day in 2000.

To plan his doodles， Hwang meets quarterly with a team of vice-presidents and creative directors. People now expect a doodle on certain holidays， like Thanksgiving. “We look at the calendar and muse about what is happening around the world， interesting events or birthdays of people who have contributed something significant.” Once he drafts a doodle， he shows it to Page and Brin. “Holding up my mockups and then holding my breath while Larry and Sergey do their ‘ thumbs-up， thumbs-down’ emperor thing is never boring，” wrote Hwang on a Google blog. “I love the fact that my little niche within this company turned out to be something so cool and creative and， well， Google-y.”

Hwang also gets many ideas from enthusiastic users like the French astronomer. In 2005 librarians around the country lobbied Hwang for a National Library Week doodle. After he created one， he received a big care package complete with a librarian action figure that shushed.

Some doodles draw strong responses. An early design for Thanksgiving featured an innocuous turkey raking leaves. But it drew vitriolic responses from Brazil， Australia， and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere from users who accused Hwang of being Northern Hemisphere-centric. “That one taught me to think more broadly，” he said. Another logo， for Michelangelo’s birthday， proved to be a little too risque for some users. “A lot of businessmen were startled when they pulled up the home page in client meetings and there was the nude David.”

In 2003， he wove the double helix into Google’s logo to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA. In 2007， he met James Watson， one of the scientists who discovered DNA. “He asked me for a signed print of the Google DNA logo，” says Hwang， his voice brimming with enthusiasm. “I couldn’t believe it. My drawing had come full circle.”

每天在谷歌主頁看到那些紀(jì)念一個(gè)個(gè)節(jié)假日和事件的漂亮徽標(biāo)，你是否曾對(duì)其背后的設(shè)計(jì)者感到好奇？設(shè)計(jì)那些谷歌徽標(biāo)的人就是黃正穆（韓裔美國人，英文名為“丹尼斯”），谷歌的正牌徽標(biāo)設(shè)計(jì)師。

每天，有近1.8億人看得到黃正穆為谷歌設(shè)計(jì)的徽標(biāo)。每天，他那些變化多樣的徽標(biāo)都給眾多因特網(wǎng)搜索者以賞心悅目之感，也使得谷歌這搜索巨人的主頁變得更具吸引力。他是商界最重要的平面設(shè)計(jì)師之一。然而，這位29歲，文質(zhì)彬彬的繪圖師一向低調(diào)——在設(shè)計(jì)方面他其實(shí)只放了一小部分時(shí)間。

黃正穆是谷歌徽標(biāo)的設(shè)計(jì)者，他為谷歌這個(gè)搜索引擎設(shè)計(jì)各式手繪圖案，紀(jì)念假日、藝術(shù)家的生日以及其他一些谷歌看重的事件。2004年6月，一位法國天文學(xué)家給黃正穆發(fā)了一封郵件，向其解釋，在24小時(shí)內(nèi)，金星將運(yùn)行至太陽前方——這可是122年一遇的事件。于是，黃正穆迅速設(shè)計(jì)了一個(gè)模擬此場景的谷歌徽標(biāo)——谷歌英文名稱中的第二個(gè)“O”變成了太陽，它上面的一個(gè)黑點(diǎn)代表金星。他把這個(gè)設(shè)計(jì)拿給谷歌的兩位創(chuàng)始人拉里·佩奇和謝爾蓋·布林看，他倆都很喜歡。“我們可是個(gè)‘科技怪杰’公司，這樣的主題一下子就能達(dá)成共識(shí)，”黃正穆說道，“幾個(gè)小時(shí)后，我就把這個(gè)徽標(biāo)掛上了谷歌主頁，提醒全世界關(guān)注這一奇妙事件?！?/p>

黃正穆畢業(yè)于美國斯坦福大學(xué)，擁有藝術(shù)和計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)雙學(xué)位，現(xiàn)在他同時(shí)還是谷歌的網(wǎng)站管理員。他把80%到90%的時(shí)間用來管理一個(gè)30人的團(tuán)隊(duì)，這個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)維持著谷歌100多種語言版本主頁的運(yùn)作?！?br>