Google’s Changing Logo Began With Burning Man
An article on Slate states that Google’s innovative logo that changes often began as an insider joke when the founders left for Burning Man in ‘98:
It all started with Burning Man. In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin took time off from coding search algorithms to jump in a car, drive to Nevada, and bake in the desert with circus performers and ecstasy-addled freaks. On a lark, the two men tweaked Google’s logo to tip off hipsters that they were out of the office, planting a Burning Man image inside one of Google’s letters. “They wanted to communicate with the users, in a fun, lighthearted way, that they were going to be away,” says Dennis Hwang, Google’s Web-master manager. “Anyone in the know would know where they were.”


