Why Ruth Kedar is in spotlight on Google 27th birthday. Read the report:
Google is celebrating its 27th birthday today, and to mark the occasion the tech giant has put up a special doodle on its homepage. While many across the world are sharing wishes and saying “Happy Birthday Google,” there is also curiosity about the story behind Google’s iconic logo and the person who designed it.
Ruth Kedar biography
That curiosity often leads to one name: Ruth Kedar. According to media reports, Ruth Kedar, a Brazilian-born designer and then faculty member at Stanford University, was the creative mind behind the original Google logo. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders and Stanford graduate students at the time, approached her in the late 1990s to design a logo that would represent their new search engine.
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Ruth Kedar took up the challenge. She experimented with several prototypes before finalising the multicolored wordmark we recognise today. Her design broke the conventions of corporate logos of the era: Instead of relying on one or two formal colours, she chose a playful, primary color palette with one secondary color (green) to reflect Google’s unconventional and innovative spirit.
Since then, the Google logo has undergone subtle redesigns for modern aesthetics and digital adaptability, but Ruth Kedar’s influence remains at the core. She is widely credited with giving Google a brand identity that has stood the test of time.
History of Google logo
On its 27th birthday, Google is not just celebrating a milestone it’s celebrating a journey that began in 1998 in a Menlo Park garage and has grown into one of the world’s most powerful technology companies. From a small startup to a global behemoth shaping the internet, the story of Google’s logo and the woman behind it remains an important part of its legacy.
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Speaking to Google on its 25th anniversary, she shared how the design came to be.
“Early in the process we decided that we would create a logotype for Google, which meant that the logo would only use the letters in the Google name,” she said.
“When I came upon the font Catull, I loved the nod to traditional typefaces, but at the same time how the lightness, elegance, precision of its lines, and its proportions deviated from traditional serifs fonts,” she said.
“Primary colours, the basis from which infinite colours are created, is also analogous to search,” said Ruth Kedar, who was born in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, in 1955.
At 16, Ruth Kedar moved with her family to Israel, where she faced the challenges of a new country. She turned to her passions mathematics and art for comfort and direction. Driven by this blend of creativity and logic, she chose to study architecture and went on to establish her own studio in Israel.
For five years she practiced as an architect, but her curiosity and ambition pushed her to look beyond. Determined to explore design more deeply, she moved to the United States and enrolled in Stanford University’s interdisciplinary Master’s Programme in Design.
Her talent did not go unnoticed. Adobe soon offered her the role of Art Director, and Stanford later invited her back as a Visiting Art Professor.
Google’s 27th birthday doodle
At Stanford, fate brought her together with two young innovators of that time Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Recognising her design brilliance, they asked her to create the logo for their fledgling startup, Google. Ruth accepted, and her work laid the foundation for one of the world’s most recognisable logos.
Her design not only shaped every evolution of the Google logo but also inspired the concept of the Google Doodle, now celebrated globally. The enduring importance of her creation is evident today, as Google proudly marks its 27th birthday with the very logo she designed.
