14 DAY TRIAL // Google is celebrating Nelson Mandela, who would have been 96 years old today, through a new doodle that’s replacing the company’s regular logo.
The image represents Mandela as a drawing, where his picture is in a medallion-like frame in the middle of the Google name, replacing the second “O.” His name appears on a ribbon that’s rippling through the doodle, with flowers intertwined.
Although it doesn't properly load on the homepage, the doodle actually comes with additional slides featuring quotes of Mandela, as you'll see below.
The former South African president died on December 5, 2013, at 95 years old and his funeral attracted people from all over the world, including presidential figures.
Not only does today mark Mandela’s birthday, but it is also the Nelson Mandela International Day, as approved in 2009 by the United Nations General Assembly to honor his legacy and to inspire others to try to make the world a better place.
Mandela wasn’t just a president in South Africa, he was also an anti-apartheid revolutionary who spent 27 years in prison after being arrested and convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state. He was released in 1990, despite the fact that he was sentenced to life imprisonment after an international campaign lobbying for his release.
Talking about the process behind the doodle, Google’s Katy Wu explains that she had been working on the project for Mandela’s anniversary for months, thinking in the beginning that she’d end up creating a very somber sort of doodle.
“But after learning more about Mandela as a person I started to understand that he was a man with a lot of character, and not always just a serious figure. That started to give me more ideas about how to approach this doodle,” she said.
Wu did a lot of research on Mandela, both online and in books, to get a better idea about who he was as a person and even contacted a doodle manager in South Africa to find out even smaller details about the local culture, history, and people.
“Something that stood out to me about Nelson Mandela was his eloquent way with words. I thought his words gave a great insight into the kind of man he was, so I wanted to focus the creative direction of the doodle on his quotes against a backdrop of the history of South Africa,” Wu added.
She then went on to create a more elaborate doodle than what most of us can see on the Google homepage, one where you can go from slide to slide and read a new quote from Mandela. “Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world,” one reads.
The doodle is available to all people in the world.
