Dennis Hwang, the international webmaster for Google, shared some secrets of his success with a large group of Paly students at lunch on Thursday in the small gym.
“I actually went to school across the street [at Stanford], so I’ve always wondered what it’s like at Paly,” Hwang said. “It’s great to finally be inside the walls.”
Hwang characterized his job as a cross between a graphic designer and a computer programmer, but he is most well-known as the artist behind the decorative illustrations of the Google logo, or “doodles,” that appear on the Google homepage on special occasions. Hwang said that he spends about half of his time drawing images and ideas on his tablet laptop.
To create a doodle, “most of the time is spent on research,” Hwang said, citing as an example the 2008 Persian New Year doodle. “It’s important to get everything right because otherwise I risk pissing off millions of people in one shot.”
Hwang said his early drawing experiences serve as the main influence for his current work.
“When I was a kid, I doodled a lot – much like many of you do, on the phone, when you’re not paying attention,” Hwang said. “My teachers would find me doodling in the margins of my notebook. A lot of the doodles you guys have seen are based on the work I did in school.”
Hwang cited the artist Jimmy Grashow as one of his most influential teachers.
“He was the weirdest teacher I ever had,” he said. “We all identified him as being like Yoda because he would walk around the classroom saying, ‘Feel the space! You must be one with the three dimensions!’ The magical thing was that in two weeks, we started getting what he meant. We had to use our peripheral vision – the whole vision – to draw.”
Hwang drew his first doodle for Bastille Day in 2000 when he was a 20-year-old Stanford intern at Google. He recalled being nervous when his supervisors asked him, because he was an art major, to create a logo commemorating the day.
“I look back at it now and think, you know, that’s not very sophisticated,” Hwang said, “but I remember at the time I was very excited.”
Junior Hannah Mernyk, an AP Photo student, said she was impressed with Hwang’s quick rise through the ranks at Google.
“I admire how fast he got started on what he wanted to do,” she said.
Hwang shared some of the tips that helped him on his quick path to success at Google.
“At Google, one of the things we always look for in the hiring process is creativity,” Hwang said. “We think, ‘Can this person think outside the box?'”
At the end of his presentation, Hwang asked the audience to name a favorite animal.
“Bunnies!” someone shouted. Hwang, using Corel Painter on his laptop, proceeded to sketch a rabbit in the act of eating a carrot, narrating his steps as he went.
The bell rang before he finished the drawing, but many students stayed to watch him.
“Keep going!” one student called.
Mernyk said she admired Hwang’s artistic prowess.
“You could tell that he was really a talented artist,” she said. “It’s not just computer capability.”