“My best day ever…”

This is the theme for this years’ sixth annual Doodle 4 Google contest. Art students are contemplating this prompt as they prepare their designs for the competition. All of the art students, except AP art, are now making this decision while creating their unique designs for the contest.

Doodle 4 Google is a nationwide contest in which allows K – 12 students to design Google’s logo in an artistic and creative way. According to http://www.google.com/doodle4google, the goal of Doodle 4 Google is to give students a blank canvas but to spark their curiosity with a broad theme. They try for something that encourages exploration to the past, present or future as well as showing moments or thoughts that range from very small and personal to broad and far reaching.

There will be 250 state finalists, 50 state winners, five national finalists, and one national winner. The prizes include having Google display a student’s design on their website, and a $30,000 college scholarship for the one national winner, and $5,000 scholarships for the top four winners. The National Winner’s doodle will be featured on the U.S. Google homepage for 24 hours on May 23rd, 2013. He or she will also get a $30,000 college scholarship, a trip to New York City for the final awards ceremony on May 22nd, 2013, a Google Chromebook, a Wacom digital design tablet, and a t-shirt printed with his or her doodle on it. Google will also award the winner’s school a $50,000 grant towards the establishment of a computer lab or technology programming. The judging criteria for the competition is theme communication, creativity, and artistic merit based on grade level. Among the guest judges this year are Katie Couric, Aly Raisman, and Pendleton Ward.

As an out of class assignment each year Art I, Art II, and Art III students are all required to create a design for the contest in their sketchbooks.

“If students really don’t want to enter [in the competition], then they can come speak to me” art teacher Gillian Bailey said

The students are required to enter because there is a $30,000 scholarship for the winner, Bailey said.

“I would also encourage if there are people who are not in art who would like to enter, I can mail in their entries as well” Bailey said.

Students’ drawings for the contest range show a large variety in artistic style as well as creativity.

“I’m making Google letters into different landmarks and symbols from countries to show travel, such as Niagra falls for the uppercase g, the roman coliseum for o, the London eye for the other o, a four leaf clover for the lowercase g, the Eiffel Tower for the I, and the Mississippi River and a steamboat for the e,” said Senior Julia Arnopp Burns.

Other students are incorporating their favorite things or hobbies into their drawings, such as music. Sophomore Ryan Siu decided upon a DJ theme,

“The first g is a pair of headphones, the two o’s are two turntables and the second g is a crate of records with a record floating and the l is a set of speakers and the e is a triplet note sideways,” he said.

Freshman Kate Yu made a Google doodle that had an amusement park theme,

“I really liked doing it because it brought out my creative side,” she said.