Ruth Kedar is an artist and designer who designed Google’s Official Logo and Registered US Trademark which became later famous around the world. Since Google didn’t have money to pay a designer at first, the first version was created in 1998 by Sergey Brin using GIMP.

Born in Brazil, Ruth Kedar received in Israel a degree in Architecture and moved to USA to attend the Stanford University Masters Program in Design resulting in master thesis on Playing cards design. Ruth Kedar was introduced to Larry Page and Sergei Brin in 1999 at Stanford. She presented them with some preliminary design ideas which they liked and she was hired to design Google logo.

Google wanted to create a unique logo that would clearly set apart them from competitors at the time (Yahoo, Excite, HotBot, LookSmart and Lycos), as well as represent their unique vision and not emulate the non-web giants of that time such as Sun and SGI.

The final version of Google logo was selected because it was playful and deceptively simple. The design was slight as to look almost non-designed, the reading effortless. The colors bring to mind memories of child play. Ruth Kedar actually refined original version of Google logo. She dropped the exclamation mark, switched the typeface, changed the first G from green to blue, tweaked the shades of the colours and tweaked the shadowing, to produce a form of the logo that has stood the test of time.

The texture and shading of each letter is done in a modest way resulting in lifting it from the page while giving it both weight and lightness. Ruth Kedar used subtly sophisticated font, but with some humor and irreverence. The chosen font is based on Catull, an old style serif typeface. Catull borrows elements from traditional writing instruments such as the quill and the chisel with a modern twist. It did the bridging between the old analog world and the new digital era.

Google logo evolution:

Ruth Kedar On Designing the Google Logo