The folks over at Google have far-ranging obsessions, something reflected in the unique splash pages they create every month or so to celebrate anniversaries and events. Some of these graphics, which are called, officially, “doodles,” are enlightening (Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s 155th Birthday), some are super cool (Freddy Mercury’s 65th Birthday) and some, in their unabashed obscurity, baffling (300th Anniversary of Spain’s National Library). Commemorating the 126th Birthday of Mies van der Rohe last week seemed like a perfect idea.
But when I saw the Mies doodle online I groaned inwardly, and then outwardly. The cartoon showed the crayon-colored Google letters stuffed inside a long glass box that’s loosely modeled after Crown Hall at IIT, an icon of postwar American architecture. The doodle, with its flattened proportions and heavy mullions, inadvertently mocked the refinement and luxe of the great architect’s work. Mies never would have crafted a volume so bluntly inert and opaque. It’s especially disappointing because the default Google splash page, with it’s super-clean, super-clear configuration, might be the most brilliant page on internet. (Compare it to the aspatial clutter of the Bing splash page.) If Google is going to invoke the memory of a master like Mies they need to come up with similarly disciplined graphics. Their 2008 doodle celebrating the 125th birthday of his contemporary Walter Gropius – each of the Google letters rendered as a cubish, International Style bungalow – was clunky, but so was Gropius’ work. Mies, on the other hand, was snobbish about form. He would have taken one look at his doodle and refused it.