14 DAY TRIAL // As you may know, once in a while, Google changes its official logo to honor some celebrities that marked important moments in the entire world. Yesterday, December 12, the company changed the logo again to commemorate Edvard Munch, a Norwegian expressionist painter and printmaker.
"Today, Google is honoring painter Edvard Munch (born December 12, 1863) with a special logo showing a rendition of his most famous painting, The Scream (the one which may have inspired the killer's mask worn in Wes Craven's Scream movie).
Once upon a time this painting might've caused you to feel the existential fear its painter expressed, but the figure has now become an icon - reproduced in many different contexts many times - so I don't think most people (including the Google designers) feel about it this way anymore. Still, this has got to be the "darkest" Google logo so far, the more playful Halloween logos aside," Philipp Lenssen said on his blog.
The Scream, that was originally called Despair, is the most popular painting made by Edvard Munch. "It is said by some to symbolize the human species taken by an attack of existential angst, with the skyline inspired by the red twilights seen after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa," according to Wikipedia.
A tempera version of the picture, measuring 83.5 x 66 cm, is presented in the Munch Museum in Oslo and another copy of The Scream is available in the National Gallery of Norway.
Google decided to keep the logo just for a single day so, if you didn't check the Google official webpage, you can see the image Google used at the start of this article. You can also find this image and other logos published on the official website on the Google Holiday Logos webpage that is available here.