Google's unknown artist has huge following

By David E. Williams
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/07/19/google.logo/index.html

Wednesday, July 19, 2006; Posted: 3:26 p.m. EDT (19:26 GMT)

(CNN) -- Dennis Hwang may be the most famous unknown artist in the world -- his work doesn't hang in galleries or museums, but it's been viewed hundreds of millions of times.

The 28-year-old webmaster designs the whimsical logos that decorate Google.com's otherwise Spartan Web site on special occasions.

这位二十八岁的网站管理员设计的风格独特的Logo在特殊的节日里为Google简洁的页面增加了不少色彩。

"It's always a fun kind of challenge to incorporate the logo into the design. Over the years, just because I kind of push myself to use different types of design if I can," Hwang said. (Have a look at Hwangs's Google logos)

把Logo融入到设计中是一项非常有意思的挑战，这些年来，我甚至是在迫使自己尽可能的使用不同风格的设计，Hwang说。

He has been manipulating the six letters in the Google name into shamrocks, fireworks, hearts and goblins since shortly after he got an internship there in 2000. Company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin found out that he was an art major in college.

从2000年在google实习开始，他曾巧妙地把Google名称里的六个字母设计成三叶草，焰火，心和小精灵。公司创始人Larry Page和Sergey Brin才发现他原来在学校学的是艺术专业。

"They said 'Hey Dennis, why don't you give this a shot,' and I've been doing it ever since," he said.

他们说，Dennis，为什么不试一下呢，然后我就一直在做这个，他说。

Now he's in charge of all Google's webmasters, and designing the logos is only about 20 percent of his job -- but that doesn't mean it's not a lot of work. Hwang said he had to do a string of all-nighters after he had what he called his "brilliant" idea to do individual designs for each of the 32 teams in this year's World Cup soccer tournament.

现在他是google网站管理员的头，设计节日logo只是他20%的工作，但是并不是说工作量很少。Hwang说有了灵感他还要连着熬夜给今年世界杯的三十二支球队设计各自的logo。

The logos link to Google search results about the topic, which can drive a lot of traffic to unsuspecting sites.

这些logo会链接到google关于这一话题的搜索结果上，这种做法有时会给毫不相关的网站带来不少流量。

"Sometimes we unfortunately take some sites down, so we have to cycle through different search queries midday," he said. "But, yeah, it's kind of the fun aspect of it that users can do more research about a topic or find out more about it on their own if they're not as familiar about what we're recognizing."

有时我们不得不撤下一些网站，通过循环放不同的搜索关键词提供更全面的搜索结果。但是最好玩的还是如果对我们提出的话题了解不多，他们会进一步的搜索，了解更多。

John Malyon, president of the online art guide Artcyclopedia.com, said his site got a huge surge in traffic in April when Google featured Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miro. He said he got tens of thousands of extra clicks.

"It didn't cause any server problems or anything. It just took me a while to track down what was happening," Malyon said. "You sort of come in, you turn on your server and look at your stats and they're wildly inflated, so you then have to do some detective work."

Malyon said most of the traffic appeared to be "curiosity clicks" -- people who were more interested in the logo than in the artist's work. He said the surge probably didn't help his business much, but he appreciated the interest.

"I'm quite happy, and every webmaster in the world is happy to have as many people as possible see their babies, but it's not the most targeted traffic in the world," he said.

Hwang said users e-mail from all over the world to praise the designs or petition for new ones.

Hwang said they did a logo for the Persian New Year after a huge online campaign and that the National Library Day design was very popular.

"That one was a huge hit among librarians across the whole country," he said. They even sent me library-related cool toys and hats things like that. One was even a librarian action figure with 'shushing action' so that was really funny."

He said he meets a few times a year with a small group of Google staffers to decide which events to cover.

他说每年他和一帮google的员工见几次面，定下来那些节日要包括进来。

"We talk about interesting holidays that are coming up, or various international holidays or any current events or news events that we think are cool and geeky or 'Google-y' in some sense and then we just sort of give it a go," he said.

我们会谈到即将到来的有趣的节日，或者各种各样的国际纪念日或者正在发生的我们认为比较cool比较geek或者比较google的新闻事件，然后我们就动手去做了，他说。

Hwang said his favorite was the birthday series honoring Michelangelo, Picasso, Van Gogh and other famous artists.

Hwang提到他最喜欢的是纪念米开朗基罗，毕加索，梵高和其他一些著名艺术家生日系列的Logo。

"Having been a student of art history for a long time those are a little bit more personal," Hwang said. "Of course, trying to mimic the style of a master is always difficult and humbling, so it does take a lot more time to do those, but it's also a lot more fun."

作为一名曾经的艺术史学生，个人感情上比较喜欢。当然在模仿大师的风格非常的困难，我也是心存恭敬。设计常常要花很长时间，从中也得到很多的乐趣。

But, like any proud parent, he would not say which one was his favorite.

像一个很自豪的家长，他不肯讲那个设计是他的最爱。

"If you had me picking just one, I don't think I could. They're just all kind of special in their own little way."

如果你要我选择一个我做不到，他们在细节上总有自己独特的地方。