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Google Doodles: Enhancing Brand & User Experience

Google's Olympic Hockey Doodle

I have been fascinated by Google doodles for years and often include them in posts.  Now here is an interesting article from Interbrand’s blog that all sites can learn from:

“Well, aside from being fun, inspiring, and surprising as a recent CNN interview with Google Doodle web designer Michael Lopez suggests, its also a fresh way to update Google’s extremely simple homepage—something that is harder than it might seem at first glance.”

With an extremely minimal and simple design, Google’s site is made up of three elements:  “a colorful, iconic logo (the design of which, good and/or bad, is topic for another discussion), a search bar, and a massive amount of white space. This allows Google to be a calm, but positive breather before you dive into the bottomless whirlpool of information. ”

“And yet, while this approach is quite successful, these three elements can also be a little limiting when it comes to accurately representing a brand personality and staying fresh and relevant in the climate of an ever changing Internet. Google needed something else to visually carry the brand. Something that could speak to who they are, yet also be organic enough to mold to anything the world throws their way. Enter the Google Doodle.”

“What was initially a quirky holiday illustration is now becoming a vital tool in communicating Google’s brand personality. Visually, it gives Google endless possibilities in a technology market that has just that–endless possibilities. It enables Google to keep

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Social Media & the 2010 Olympics

Google Doodle for Olympic Curling

I just love what social media is adding to the 2010 Olympics!  From the thousands of tweets from the #Olympics Twitter feed, to YouTube videos, to Facebook, social media is definitely enriching my experience of the Vancouver Winter Olympics.  Amazing.

My favorite tweets so far are from the people calling curling “ice shuffleboard” but the number of tweets supporting the athletes is truly incredible.  On Facebook, I became a fan of Vancouver 2010 Olympics and last night right after the Canada/Swiss hockey game, they posted asking who had seen the game.  Within 4 minutes I and three hundred others had responded that we liked it!  Every time I refreshed my screen it went up by 50+ people and within 24 minutes over 1500 “liked” the post and a third had made comments.  After 10 hours, over 3,500 “liked” the post and 1,150+ had made comments about the post.  YouTube has a rich base of videos about the Olympics but several of my favorites include commercials about future young athletes and Canada’s first gold medal on home soil, but I also love Shaun White’s gold medal big air performance with amazing spins, flips and twists (all together!).

So social media is definitely engaging and bringing the world together over wonderful global events.  Yeah!