Google celebrates 27 years and honors immigrant designer Ruth Kedar who created its first logo

Highlights

• Ruth Kedar, a Brazilian-born designer, created Google’s original logo
  
• Kedar was a Stanford professor when Sergey Brin and Larry Page approached her
  
• The logo’s use of Catull font and primary colors made it distinctive and enduring
  

The woman behind the iconic logo

As Google marks its 27th birthday, the company is honoring Ruth Kedar, the designer of its first logo. Kedar, born in Campinas, Brazil in 1955, immigrated with her family to Israel as a teenager before eventually moving to the United States to study design.

By the time she met Google’s founders, she had already established herself as an architect, designer, and professor at Stanford University.

From architecture to design

Kedar initially studied architecture in Israel and opened her own studio before pursuing graduate studies in design at Stanford. Her thesis work on playing card design led to a commission from Adobe, where she helped create the Adobe Deck — a promotional set of cards showcasing Adobe Illustrator.

Her success with Adobe opened the door to further opportunities, including a role as Art Director and later a return to Stanford as a visiting professor.

How Google found her

It was at Stanford that Sergey Brin and Larry Page, then PhD students with an ambitious start-up, approached Kedar to design a logo for their project. Instead of treating the assignment as a student exercise, she gave it the full weight of her design expertise.

Designing the Google logo

Kedar opted to create a logotype using only the letters of the company’s name. She selected the Catull font, which she felt combined tradition with modernity.

“When I came upon the font Catull, I loved the nod to traditional typefaces, but at the same time how the lightness, elegance, and precision of its lines deviated from traditional serif fonts,” she explained in an interview marking Google’s 25th anniversary.

The choice of primary colors was deliberate. She saw them as both playful and foundational — the basis for all other colors, and a visual metaphor for search itself.

Kedar opted to create a logotype using only the letters of the company’s nameGoogle Doodles

Lasting impact

The logo became a cornerstone of Google’s identity, evolving over time but always rooted in Kedar’s original design choices. Her work also laid the foundation for the Google Doodle, which has become one of the company’s most beloved traditions.