Where do you go dozens of times a day to check the hours for your favorite dinner spot, get directions to a meeting or find the answer to a tricky question at trivia night? Google! Google is a search engine giant with a logo development process as interesting as the millions of search results it provides.

The Logo Development History of Google

In 1998, the first iteration of the Google logo was created. Larry Page was the designer, and he used a free graphic design program called GIMP to create it. They altered the typeface in the mock-up and added an exclamation point to mirror the logo of another search engine—Yahoo. Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who polished off the logo, experimented with different color variations to make the version of the Google logo that we all knew for years.

A Major Upgrade

The logo above was finalized on May 31, 1999 and went without modification until May 6, 2010. In 2010, the team updated the typeface and changed the coloring. That isn’t to say that there were not attempts to make modifications to the logo over that 20 year period, though. Numerous designers experimented with adding graphics and changing the typeface, but nothing made it past development. That version of the logo went three years before it was changed again to a “flatter” version with an altered color palette.

Today’s Logo

On September 1, 2015, the current Google logo was released. While the colors remained the same, the company developed an original, more modern, sans-serif typeface. Since the new logo was introduced, it has been used on all Google products as well as those introduced by Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

Logo Development from m design

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