14 DAY TRIAL // Google has come up with its coolest doodle in a rather long while in an effort to celebrate the 180th birthday of John Venn, the logician and philosopher who invented the Venn diagrams.
The company did exactly what you’d expect for the occasion – it created a set of Venn diagrams to help illustrate the concept, but did this in a fun way. As you load up Google today, you’ll notice the Google logo drawn in a colorful way, with various patterns. The two “O’s” in the middle are replaced by an animation going through various items, and a play button appears in the place where the diagrams intersect. Clicking on the logo will take you to another screen.
The entire Google name is wiped out, only to leave behind two colored circles. The one on the left is surrounded by five different icons – an animal, a musical instrument, a car, a tree and a fish. Upon clicking on one of the options, you’ll notice another set of buttons appear on the right diagram too – a microscope, a bird, an ice cream cone, a snail and a space ship.
By choosing the animal in the first diagram, you’ll notice that it actually stands for mammals, while the snail stands for animals with a shell. The middle of the Venn diagram will now display an armadillo walking around.
Mixing up the musical instrument with the ice cream cone (loves the cold) will result in an ice cream truck driving down the street, playing the well-known song.
Perhaps the funniest of them all is when you mix the fish (which stands for marine animals) and the spaceship (which stands for mythical creatures) only to find a cute-looking kraken playing with a ship.
Google’s Mike Dutton is responsible for the Venn doodle. “Venn diagrams in general are naturally pretty fun. So as far as finding an idea for an interactive doodle, Venn was a no-brainer. But finding a way to clearly and correctly communicate how these diagrams actually work was a bit trickier,” he explains about the process.
Dutton adds that the doodle looks more like a kid’s game than a serious Venn diagram, because most people learn about them in early school years. The fact that his creation could be enjoyed by all users is also nice.
Out of the dozens of combinations, the doodle’s author reveals that the kraken was the animation he loved coming up with the most. “I loved the idea of taking something that is utterly terrifying, such as a large sea creature that devours entire ships, and turning it into just a little dude having a bit of fun, albeit still at the expense of the ship and its crew. As long the diagram checked out logically, it was fun to take liberties in the final reveals,” he notes.
