Google Memorial Day logo

Google Memorial Day Logo Design Contest
May 29, 2007

[UPDATE, May 26, 2008: Despite all the negative publicity Google received over this issue in 2007, the following year on Memorial Day of 2008 -- they still didn't mark the holiday with a special logo.]

[UPDATE, October 9, 2007: All Los Angeles Times readers, please click here to read the full interview I gave to the L.A. Times, explaining the reasons for this contest and the significance of Google's political bias.]

On Monday, May 28, 2007, Google once again failed to create a special logo to mark Memorial Day -- exactly as they fail to do every year, despite the fact that they mark dozens of lesser or contrived "holidays" with special logos.

Google's so-called excuse for this behavior is laughable:

If we were to commemorate this holiday, we'd want to express reverence; however, as Google's special logos tend to be lighthearted in nature, this would be a particularly challenging design. We wouldn't want to create a graphic that could be interpreted as disrespectful in any way.

Considering that Google has a large staff of professional graphic designers -- just how difficult could it be to come up with a respectful design? They've even featured many logos submitted by Google users.

Perhaps we can show Google that it's not so hard by simply making some Memorial Day Google logos of our own.

Everybody: fire up your graphics software, and start making your proposed design for Google's Memorial Day-themed logo (see link below for a hi-res Google logo you can use).

~~Send your entries to me~~ [CONTEST NOW CLOSED], and the best ones will be chosen and displayed on this page.

These winning entries will then be sent to Google to demonstrate that it is quite easy to create a respectful Memorial Day Google logo, proving that the company's ridiculous "excuse" is nothing but a smokescreen.

RULES FOR DESIGNERS:

Clicking on this link will download a hi-res version of the Google logo to your hard drive. Use it as the basis of your new design. Send the edited version to me -- in jpg (or gif) format preferably, and try to keep the file size under 300kb at most (the lower the better).

The goal is to create a logo that is respectful, tactful, and reflecting the spirit of Memorial Day. For inspiration, go to this page and click on "More Holiday Logos" at the upper right to see all the previous special holiday logos that Google has ever used. This page explains the meaning and history of Memorial Day : "This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country."

Winning entries will be displayed here.

[UPDATE: The contest is now closed. All the following logo designs were submitted to Google, which has never responded or even acknowledged receipt of the submission. If I ever get a reply from them, I will post it here.]

[UPDATE: As of May 26, 2008, I still have never gotten any reply from Google over this issue.]