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.