Re-reading my post about SDCC ’09, I couldn’t help but marvel at the Google logo celebrating the famed event. I have always had a fascination with Google specialty logos – you can’t help but admit that some of them are outright clever.

From a designer’s perspective, Dennis Hwang has to have one of the most coveted jobs in the world. With over a hundred million visitors a day, the lone image on Google.com is one of the most-viewed on the planet – what type of graphic artist wouldn’t want that kind of exposure?

(Random tangent: there is a one-third chance that I am related to Mr. Hwang, as the Korean surname Hwang, which makes up roughly 1.5% of the South Korean population, can be traced back to only 3 separate lineages. Compare that to Lee, with 241 lineages, or Kim, with a staggering 348 lineages!)

Being an obsessively annoying list-maker, I have decided to compile a list of my favorite 30 Google logos, in reverse chronological order…

1. July 23, 2009: San Diego Comic-Con ’09

 

2. April 27, 2009: Samuel F. B. Morse’s birthday

 

3. March 20, 2009: first day of spring (in the style of The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

 

4. March 14, 2009: Giovanni Schiaparelli’s birthday

 

5. March 2, 2009: Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)’s birthday

 

6. January 28, 2009: Jackson Pollock’s birthday

 

7. January 1, 2009: New Years Day ’09

 

8. December 21, 2008: in celebration of the holidays

 

9. November 21, 2008: René Magritte’s birthday

 

10. November 4, 2008: Election Day ’08

 

11. October 31, 2008: Halloween ’08

 

12. September 10, 2008: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is switched on
(also see In Case the World Comes to an End Tomorrow…)

 

13. August 8, 2008: the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics
(Google created a series of logos in celebration of the 2008 Olympics. Go here to see them all.)

 

14. July 29, 2008: the 50th anniversary of NASA

 

15. July 7, 2008: Marc Chagall’s birthday

16. July 4, 2008: Independence Day ’08

 

17. June 6, 2008: Diego Velázquez’s birthday

 

18. May 22, 2008: Doodle 4 Google ’08 winner (by Grace Moon)

 

19. May 16, 2008: the first laser demonstrated 48 years ago

 

20. January 28, 2008: the 50th anniversary of LEGO

 

21. December 12, 2006: Edvard Munch’s birthday

 

22. April 20, 2006: Joan Miro’s birthday

 

23. January 27, 2006: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthday

 

24. January 4, 2006: Louis Braille’s birthday

 

25. April 15, 2005: Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday

 

26. March 30, 2005: Vincent van Gogh’s birthday

 

27. April 25, 2003: 50th annivesary of understanding DNA

 

28. March 14, 2003: Albert Einstein’s birthday

 

29. May 20, 2002: Dilbert Google Doodle
(Dilbert creator Scott Adams created a series of logos for this workweek. Go here for the full series.)

 

30. August 15, 2001: Korean Liberation Day ’01

 

Do you have any favorite Google logos that you think belongs on this list?

 

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ETA: Reader graphicnatured pointed me to illustrator Tyler Jordan’s masterpiece, which rose to fame on Digg and won a contest to re-design the Google logo:

Thanks for the heads-up, graphicnatured!