Who Has The Best Holiday Logos?
Google and Yahoo! have for a long time customized their logos on numerous holidays throughout the year. This practice has been going on for years, and its hard to tell who was doing it first (Google's first "doodle" logo appeared in 1999, for Yahoo! that information is harder to come by -- if anyone knows when they first started modifying their logo for holidays, please chime in!). More recently, Ask got in on the act.
Today, being Thanksgiving (a major US holiday) is no different. All three have spruced up their logos in the celebratory spirit (they are the only members of the "big 5" search engines to do so). Presented below are the Thanksgiving day logos from Google, Yahoo! and Ask. [Correction: AOL also has a holiday logo, and the post has been updated to include it!] Which is your favorite? Which company consistently provides the best holiday logo modifications? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Google's logos have for a long time been drawn by in-house graphic designer Dennis Hwang. Today, Hwang is in charge of all of Google's web masters, but designing logo doodles is still about 20% of his job. This year, Google takes a traditional approach with a couple of turkeys sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal (but, I wonder what they're eating?).
Yahoo!
For the past few years, Yahoo! has taken to using Flash to animate its holiday logos. That makes for some really fun results, and today is no exception. Their Thanksgiving logo includes a cornucopia spilling traditional holiday fare, and some food (corn, potatoes, pumpkin, pie) that is magically transformed into a group of happy dancers by a falling buckle hat. A bit odd? You bet, but it's a lot of fun, too.
Ask
Ask has always been sort of the odd man out, doing things their own way. Not content to modify their logo, they often modify their entire page. Today's page sports a background made of turkey (well, a very close up picture of a turkey). Honestly, it's a bit creepy -- I mean, really, whose turkey is that shiny in real life?
AOL
Thanks to reader Boris who pointed out that AOL does indeed have a holiday logo (I had only checked their search page -- whoops!). Presented below in all its plainness, AOL's holiday alteration is certainly the most "safe" on our list. A buckle hat and some fallen leaves. Cute, but hardly lighting the world on fire (or inspiring acid flashbacks, like one of the logos above -- wait, maybe that's a good thing).
Which is your favorite? Do you know of any other sites that decorate for the holidays? Let us know in the comments!
Share1 TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1786
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
here's one - http://www.aol.com/ ! happy turkey day!
Google's logo actually appears to be a pilgrim sitting down with an Indian. Sarcastic political comment?
Also the gmail logo has a turkey getting chased by a sharp implement?
Nice background info on the various logos, Josh.
Is it just me, or are the logos a bit creepy this year? At Google, we have a couple of cannibalistic birds. At Yahoo, we've got images that look like they're from some sort of acid trip. And, at Ask, we're vividly reminded that tens of millions of turkeys have met their end in service to the holiday.
That said, allow me to suggest a few additions to your list.
First, AOL has actually altered their logo a bit for the day. Not sure why it didn't make it to your list.
Second, Zuula once again has a special logo for the holiday.
Happy Thanksgiving!
@Boris: Thanks for the heads up on AOL! I stupidly only checked their search.aol.com page (I guess I have it hardwired into my brain).
I've updated the post to include AOL. :)
Nice post. I just thought I'd point out that Yahoo seems to have prepared several logos. Right now I am seeing the one in your post, but before I refreshed I saw one with falling leaves and a Turkey which moved around a bit :)
Google destroyed them all. Better luck next year everyone.
The Ask.com turkey looks like a prop from a Pink Floyd concert! (i.e. the big balloons they used to do of pigs etc). Scary stuff.
Google. If you throw in the Gmail logo, it's no contest. The main Google logo is just so much easier to play around with
Haa haa - anyway: I, as veg. like the ASK version.
All users can smell the roasting ...
Popurls.com is sporting a turkey logo today.
Interesting post. Holiday decoration has really picked up across the globe. I covered the participation of India centric websites in my post on the occassion of the India's Independence day.
http://praveenlohani.blogspot.com/2007/08/sexy-at-sixty-why-not.html
Extremely interesting.
Josh, the first holiday logos started appearing online in the 1970s. Before a lot of these Web whippersnappers were even born.
http://www.brianstorms.com/archives/000793.html
I'm late on this, just getting back into town, but Google is hilarious. Had to use GoOG-411 on the holiday and they even had a gobbling turkey sound on there. They always make me smile or wonder ("what the heck holiday is it today?")