How the Captivating Venn Diagram Google Doodle Came to Be
:upscale()/2014/08/04/769/n/1922507/fe2897e08bd0d982_thumb_temp_cover_file13465311407172549.jpg)
Today's interactive Google Doodle celebrating the 180th birthday of John Venn breaks the top five of our favorite doodles ever, a tough honor to achieve. The Cambridge-educated logician created the diagram system to represent logical sets, as separated into two circles. The overlapping space that includes both circles denotes traits that both groups share. It's since been used to analyze everything from how often a streaming music website will embarrass you with its choices to how happy one can be while wearing pants (spoiler: not very happy).
Read on for more of how the Google Doodle team honored John Venn.
According to the project lead and designer of the Venn doodle, Mike Dutton, the team wanted to express two certainties in this doodle — sound logic and silliness.
Mike sat down with two Doodle engineers, Corrie Scalisi and Mark Ivey, to figure out exactly how this commemorative illustration would work. Since Venn diagrams were something most had learned of in elementary school, they wanted it to have the feel of a children's game, something that both adults and kids who navigated to Google.com would enjoy, hence the vibrant animations.
Of course, the key to this doodle was the inclusion of circles in the illustration and the dozens of animated Venn diagram combinations the team created.
The hardest combination for the team? Vegetation/mythical. Not everyone passed up to N.E.W.T. levels of Herbology, it seems.
Did you spot the singing Chris Hadfield in the Venn Google Doodle?