Who is Ryan Germick behind the animated Doodles on our screens?
How much do you know about Momofuku Ado's 105th birthday? Or about the Dragon Boat Festival, the last day of the Canadian cent, or about Freddie Mercury?
Chances are you've read something about all of this, especially if you use Google as your internet search engine.
And this is thanks to the famous… Google Doodles!
Designed to commemorate a specific person, event or milestone, Google have evolved from simple drawings to fully 3D games and creative experiences for users.
But who is "hiding" behind all this?
Ryan Germick is the head of the Google Doodle team, which is based at the company's headquarters in California.
He oversees 10 artists working there and collaborates with four engineers and two producers, who coordinate the work of another 100-plus people around the world, as well as ensuring that the process of creating each Doodle runs as smoothly as possible.
Born and raised in Indiana, USA, Ryan loved art and comics from a young age. He studied illustration and creative writing in New York City and then (in the early 2000s) spent several months in southern India drawing and taking remedial Tamil classes. There he created his first website, to share photos with his friends and family.
"It was the first time I realized the power of technology. This was before social media and Flickr came into our lives," he told The Telegraph's Rhiannon Williams. "People who didn't know me, not just my friends and family, were seeing my site and sending me messages. That's when a light bulb went off in my head.".
"I was the coolest kid in school and for me, a computer was just another tool to do something interesting with," he confessed and continued: "When I lived in New York I had a tiny room and there was no space for my drawings and other things. The computer was a very efficient place to work and I learned that you could connect with the world through the internet and the power of that was that you could create something and share it with the whole world. Maybe today it's something we take for granted, but at that time it was something unprecedented and exciting at the same time. It was a terrible time to be alive and to create.".
After completing his studies, Ryan moved to California to be closer to his brother and started working at Google - the first company he sent his resume to - in 2006 under the guidance of Dennis Hwang, the first Doodler.
Although the first Google Doodle appeared on the site in 1998, the official Doodle team was only created in 2009.
Doodles gradually evolved from static images, to embedded links and animated images, culminating in the first playable Google Doodle for PAC-MAN's 30th birthday on May 21, 2010.
Of course, the whole idea was "orchestrated" by Ryan.
His team now produces around 400 Doodles a year, of which around 50-100 are animated and 12 of them are fully interactive.
Planning begins about 18 months in advance of the events, people, and milestones that have been decided to be honored in the most creative way, and the only restrictions are that the word Google must be recognizable, and the size is specific.
Ryan and his team make a conscious effort to incorporate many different styles and creative mediums, because as he says, "variety is very important.".
Source: newsbeast.gr
