Work     About

YouTube Doodle

My role

Lead Art Director




International Tarot Day — Niv Bavarsky




01 — Celebrating communities
The Doodle puts a spotlight on the diverse and delightfully esoteric communities of YouTube through a single-day animated takeover of the logo which is accompanied by a larger illustration. I lead a small team of designers who create roughly half of the Doodles in-house. For the remaining half, we partner with hand-picked artists from around the globe to tell stories which speak authentically to our communities.





Black History Month 2021 — Leandro Assis


Earth Day — Chelsea Beck





02 — Freedom & constraint

The Doodle affords a wide degree of creative freedom but within a highly constrained format. The logo space, in particular, is tiny and the animation is limited to 10 seconds. It runs only once and resolves to an even smaller lockup. I work to ensure that each pixel does its job to help us tell big stories in a small space.



Speedruns — Robert Wallace




03 — Letting the artist speak
Every Doodle I direct is a collaboration with the artist. This is particularly true when we work with someone from a community our team is unfamiliar with. To help us celebrate the International Day of Sign Languages 2022, we engaged deaf Australian artist Jaycob Campbell (aka Gonketa). Meeting with Jaycob on video via a translator, it was clear how integral rhythm and tempo are to the way he communicates as a speaker of Auslan. We encouraged his desire to bring this energy to the artwork through the use of expressive colors and linework.



SignTube — Jaycob Campbell, Ana Carolina




Selected Doodles


Black History Month 2021 — Marco Cheatham



Pride 2021 — Shannon Levin



International Women’s Day 2022 — Paula Cruz, Wednesday Studio



Billion Views Club — Niv Bavarsky



Billion Views Club — Niv Bavarsky, Freddie Griffiths



Meditation — Niv Bavarsky, Nataly Menjivar



Choreography — Nick Illuzada



Senior Citizens Cooking — Elliot kruszynski



Live Animal Cams — Niv Bavarsky



Live Animal Cams — Niv Bavarsky, Nataly Menjivar



1v1 Basketball — Chelsea Beck, Pedro Piccinini








Creative Director — Chris Bettig

Producers — Ash Qualischefski, May Azcue

Art Director — Yeojin Shin

Animations Lead — Andrew Lebov 
Animaiton — Nataly Menjivar

Illustration — Chelsea Beck, Niv Bavarsky

Design — Jessie Zo


Jesse Lefkowitz — 2023