Google's 27th Birthday: Meet Ruth Kedar, Brazlilian immigrant and Stanford professor who designed Google logo

Happy Birthday Google: Ruth Kedar, an immigrant to the United States, was already accomplished and teaching at the Stanford University when two PhD students approached her with a proposal. She accepted the deal and took the work seriously, and designed a logo for something that defied the tests of time.

Ruth Kedar, a Brazilian immigrant, was the mind behind Google's iconic logo, that the search engine giant is honouring today on its 27th birthday.

Here is everything you need to know about Ruth Kedar, the woman behind the iconic Google logo that changed the world.

Who is Ruth Kedar?

Ruth Kedar was born in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, in 1955. It was on the eve of her 16th birthday that her parents moved to Israel to start a new life.

As a teenager, Ruth was faced with a new language and culture, and found solace in math and art. It was then she decided to study architecture, and opened her own studio in Israel.

After five years of work as an architect, Ruth Kedar realised that she wanted to go back to studying. This made her move to the US.

At the United States, Ruth started her interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Design at the Stanford University. The theme of her master's thesis was playing cards design, and soon she was commissioned by Adobe to be one of the designers of the Adobe Deck, a promotional deck of playing cards introducing Adobe Illustrator.

Her talent made Adobe offer her the role of the Art Director at the company, and later Stanford called her back as a Visiting Art Professor.

It was at Stanford she met Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who approached her to design the logo of their upcoming startup, Google.

How the iconic Google logo came to be

Rather than dismissing Sergey Brin and Larry Page as mere students, Ruth took her work seriously, put in the work, and ended up creating a logo that outlived design trends.

Speaking to Google on its 25th anniversary, she shared how the design came to be.

“Early in the process we decided that we would create a logotype for Google, which meant that the logo would only use the letters in the Google name,” she said.

For Ruth Kedar, that meant choosing a font that the logo would only use the letters in the Google name. She chose a font that on one hand evoked the traditions of the past while also being forward looking.

“When I came upon the font Catull, I loved the nod to traditional typefaces, but at the same time how the lightness, elegance, precision of its lines, and its proportions deviated from traditional serifs fonts,” she said.

When the word Google was typed on the font, the result was something nobody had ever seen before.

The use of primary colours in the logo was done keeping in mind that they are often used in early childhood toys, which would stick to users' minds.

“Primary colours, the basis from which infinite colours are created, is also analogous to search,” Ruth Kedar said.

Her design became the basis of all the changes to the logo of Google, as well as birthed the idea of Google Doodle, which is loved worldwide today.