17 year-old Cindy Tang has won a national competition put on by Google Canada to create a special design for the search giant’s homepage. She topped thousands of students across the country who submitted designs, each aiming to finish the phrase “If I could invent anything, I would invent…”
When you visit Google.ca tomorrow you’ll be greeted by Tang’s Sea Telescope, a vibrant sunset across a waterscape rich with life and playful colours.
Her design and those of other national finalists were given a big reveal ceremony at the Royal Ontario Museum and they will remain on display there until April 27th.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne joined Google Canada Managing Director Chris O’Neill along with competition judges astronaut Chris Hadfield and Google Science Fair winner Anne Makosinksi to commend the winners and praise the creativity seen in submissions.
From age-reversing machines to electric trees to virtual reality simulators, the doodles collectively revealed an astonishing quality of work and breadth of ideas. Choosing a winner must have been a trying task.
As the top winner Cindy Tang gets a $10,000 scholarship, another $10,000 grant donated to her school, and an HP Chromebook computer. Not bad for someone who has never participation in an art competition before.
The four finalists after her did pretty well too, each getting a $5,000 scholarship and an HP Chromebook computer.
Xusheng (Sam) Yu represented the Prairie provinces with a design on an electric tree.
David Isaiah Jeans made people chuckle with his age-reversing machine doodle. He represents the Atlantic provinces.
Meriam Akkou’s flowing underwater city doodle represented Quebec.
Maria Angela Viaje’s virtual reality simulator google did an excellent job representing the best of British Columbia and the North.
“I wanted the focus to be a landscape” says Cindy Tang of her design. “With a thing like a Google Doodle I think it’s best to basically simplify it and be able to have people recognize what it is.” Google Canada says their search page sees 4 billion searches each month. Tomorrow will see Tang’s design greeting those users for inspiration.
“In my opinion, when you first look at it I really hope that you will be (inspired) to research marine life” she says of the prospect. “In the future, if a sea telescope ever happens to pop up, I’d like to be the first to see through it.”
You can view the top 25 doodles from the competition online here.
