Summer is finally here – well, at 1:16 p.m. officially for those of us on the East Coast in the U.S. In honor of the summer solstice – the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere – Google has tapped a guest Doodler, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, to create a special anime flavored kawaii logo for Google's home page.
The logo is bright, flowery, and colorful, fittingly, but is a non-traditional way to celebrate summer for Google. And does anyone else find the right head, which resembles a vampiric Stewie Griffin on an LSD trip, very creepy?
Murakami, who was on Time magazine's 2008 edition of the 100 Most Influential People list and is noted for his "superflat" style, also illustrated a second snowy logo for Google, which appears in locations in the Southern Hemisphere today for their winter solstice.
Last year, Google welcomed summer with four separate summer Doodles (as well as four winter Doodles for countries in the Southern Hemisphere). Here's a compilation:
In addition to a Father's Day Doodle in 2009, Google also posted summer and winter logos in select countries:
The first summer solstice Google Doodle appeared in 2008:
What do you think of today's Doodles?
