Ruth Kedar is a Brazilian-born artist and designer, best known for designing the original Google logo from 1999 to 2015.
Its playful array of primary colors—blue, red, yellow, and green—has become synonymous with search, discovery, and boundless possibility. Behind this enduring icon stands Ruth Kedar, a Brazilian-born artist and designer whose serendipitous encounter with two ambitious Stanford students in 1998 would etch her name into the annals of tech history. Her story is one of elegant problem-solving, a collaborative partnership with visionary founders, and the creation of a design so successful it has become virtually invisible in its perfection.
Early Life and Formative Years of Ruth Kedar
Ruth Kedar's path to becoming a trailblazing designer was paved with cross-continental moves and a deep-seated passion for blending art with precision. Born on January 27, 1955, in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, Kedar grew up in a family that valued creativity and intellectual pursuit. Her early years were marked by the vibrant energy of Brazilian life, where she first discovered her affinity for drawing and mathematics—two disciplines that would later converge in her architectural studies.
The eve of her 16th birthday brought a profound shift: her family immigrated to Israel, seeking new opportunities. This relocation thrust young Ruth into an unfamiliar world of Hebrew language and Middle Eastern culture, far from the tropical rhythms of her homeland. Amid the challenges of adaptation, art and math emerged as her anchors. "On a foreign land, faced with a new language and culture, art and math were a solace," Kedar later reflected in interviews. These subjects not only provided emotional refuge but also ignited her curiosity about how form and function could harmonize.
Inspired by this intersection, Ruth Kedar pursued a degree in architecture at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Architecture, with its demand for both aesthetic intuition and structural rigor, seemed the perfect fit. After graduating, she launched her own studio specializing in environmental graphics—a nascent field in Israel at the time. For five years, she immersed herself in projects that transformed public spaces through signage, murals, and interactive installations. Yet, despite the professional success, Kedar felt a pull toward deeper exploration. The studio work, while fulfilling, lacked the interdisciplinary spark she craved. This realization propelled her toward the United States, where she enrolled in Stanford University's master's program in Design. It was a bold leap, one that would soon align her talents with the nascent forces of the internet age.
Academic Pursuits and Professional Foundations of Ruth Kedar
At Stanford, Kedar's intellectual horizons expanded dramatically. The program's emphasis on product design and visual communication resonated with her architectural background, allowing her to experiment with typography, user interfaces, and branding. Her master's thesis on playing card design exemplified her innovative spirit: a fusion of historical ornamentation and modern functionality. This work caught the eye of Adobe Systems, leading to a commission for the Adobe Deck, a promotional set of playing cards released in 1988. Kedar's contributions to this project, which blended whimsical illustrations with technical precision, marked her entry into the tech design world.
The Adobe Deck was more than a one-off; it evolved into the award-winning Analog Deck and Duolog Deck, showcasing her ability to infuse digital tools with artistic flair. These successes elevated her profile, landing her a role as an Art Director at Adobe. There, she honed her skills in creating user-friendly visuals for software that would empower creators worldwide. By the mid-1990s, Kedar had returned to Stanford as a Visiting Art Professor, teaching courses in the Art Department and Mechanical Engineering's product design program. Her classes, open to students across disciplines, emphasized the creative process as a bridge between technology and human experience. "The process always starts with curiosity," she often tells her students, a mantra drawn from her own life of reinvention.
It was in this academic milieu that fate intervened. As an instructor, Kedar was no stranger to student projects pushing boundaries. Little did she know that one such collaboration would redefine her legacy.
The Story behind the Design of the Google Logo
The year was 1998, and the internet was a wild frontier—clunky, text-heavy, and far from the polished ecosystem we know today. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, PhD candidates in computer science at Stanford, were tinkering with a search engine they called "BackRub." Their rudimentary logo, a stick-figure homage to massage therapy, hardly captured the revolutionary potential of their algorithm. Through a mutual connection, they approached Kedar, the poised professor whose design expertise seemed tailor-made for their vision.
Ruth Kedar took the gig seriously, despite Google's shoestring budget and uncertain future. "I really wanted to get a sense for who they were, the company that they were building, where they were building it for, what was their vision," she recalled in a Logo Geek podcast interview. Initial meetings revealed two young founders brimming with irreverence and ambition: they wanted a logo that screamed playfulness, not corporate sterility. No budgets for extravagance meant the design had to rely on wit and simplicity—a logotype using only the letters "G-O-O-G-L-E."
Kedar's first concept was stark: predominantly black, rendered in Adobe Garamond, a classic serif font evoking timeless authority. But it felt too somber for Google's youthful ethos. Iterations followed, drawing from the era's design lexicon. She experimented with magnifying glasses as search metaphors, crosshairs for precision, and multidimensional "O"s to symbolize infinite results. Some prototypes veered into chaos—clip-art elements clashing with bold patterns—but they all circled back to core principles: clarity, memorability, and joy.
The breakthrough came with the Catull typeface, an old-style serif designed by Gustav Jaeger in 1982. "I loved the nod to traditional typefaces, but at the same time how the lightness, elegance, precision of its lines, and its proportions deviated from traditional serifs," Kedar explained. Catull's elegant stems and precise serifs bridged the analog past with the digital future, making the word "Google" read effortlessly while feeling fresh. Then came the colors: primary hues—blue for the first "G" and "L," red for the "O"s, yellow for the second "G," and green for the "e." These weren't arbitrary; primaries evoked childhood toys, embedding nostalgia and approachability. "Primary colours, the basis from which infinite colours are created, is also analogous to search," she noted, tying the palette directly to Google's mission of endless discovery.
To inject rule-breaking flair, Kedar shifted the sequence, placing a secondary color on the "L" instead of following rainbow order. "We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order, we put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the idea that Google doesn’t follow the rules," she shared. Debuting in a refined form in 1999, this design—with its subtle shadow for depth—matured the brand without losing its spark. Brin and Page loved it; the rest is history.
Ruth Kedar's Lasting Impact and the Evolution of the Google Logo
Ruth Kedar's logo didn't just stick; it thrived. Displayed on Google's homepage for over 15 years, it became the digital equivalent of the Nike swoosh—ubiquitous, versatile, and evocative. Its simplicity ensured scalability across screens, from clunky monitors to smartphones, while the colors fostered emotional connection. The design even birthed the Google Doodle tradition: when Brin and Page altered the logo for Burning Man in 1998, Kedar's playful foundation made such tweaks feel natural. Today, Doodles celebrate everything from holidays to historical figures, amassing billions of views annually.
As Google grew into a global titan, the logo evolved subtly under in-house teams. Subsequent refreshes retained the core color scheme but transitioned to a flatter, more geometric sans-serif typeface to align with modern digital aesthetics. Yet, the DNA of Kedar’s 1999 design remains intact. The color sequence is unbroken, and the sense of clean, friendly simplicity is, if anything, even more pronounced. Her work established a visual language so powerful that it allowed for evolution without losing its core identity. "With that said, I believed then and now that creating a solution that is only of the moment can be very limiting," Kedar once reflected. Her timeless approach ensured the logo's adaptability, proving that great design anticipates change without chasing trends.
The impact extends beyond visuals. Kedar's work symbolized Silicon Valley's fusion of art and code, inspiring generations of designers to prioritize user delight. In earlier interviews, she showcased wild prototypes—joined "O"s like binary code, 3D extrusions—revealing the deliberate restraint that won out. "I had no idea at the time that Google would become as ubiquitous as it is today," she admitted. That humility underscores her genius: crafting for a startup, not a behemoth.
Ruth Kedar's Life After Google: A Multifaceted Legacy
Post-Google, Ruth Kedar didn't rest on her laurels. Her career blossomed into a tapestry of design, artistry, and mentorship. She founded Kedar Designs, a studio offering branding, print, and digital solutions. Clients from various industries benefited from her holistic approach, integrating sophisticated aesthetics with business strategy. As a creative director, she mentors emerging talents, speaking at conferences on the creative process.
Art remains her experimental playground. Through her personal website, she sells mixed-media originals, monotypes, and digital prints—works drawn from personal narratives of migration and reinvention. Often revisiting early pieces, she infuses them with new meaning, mirroring her life's iterative nature. Beyond the canvas, Kedar practices Aikido, holding a high-level black belt. The martial art's philosophy of harmony and flow parallels her design ethos: redirecting energy with grace.
Ruth Kedar's design for the Google logo is more than pixels and a palette; it's a testament to how one person's vision can illuminate the world. From a Brazilian childhood to Israeli architecture, Stanford innovation, and global iconography, her journey illustrates design's power to connect, surprise, and endure. Ruth Kedar is the hidden architect of a symbol that defines an era, a designer who proved that the most enduring ideas often start with a simple, curious spark.
Ruth Kedar is an Iconic Designer
Ruth Kedar's design for the Google logo is more than pixels and palette; it's a testament to how one person's vision can illuminate the world. From a Brazilian childhood to Israeli architecture, Stanford innovation, and global iconography, her journey illustrates design's power to connect, surprise, and endure. As Google turns 27, reviving her 1998 masterpiece, we celebrate not just a logo but a legacy of playful precision. In Kedar's words, it's about starting with curiosity—and who knows what infinite discoveries that might unlock?