Featured on Google home pages worldwide today is an ultra special Google Doodle not just for Valentine’s Day but also for the 154th birthday of George W.G. Ferris Jr., the inventor of the Ferris Wheel.

This year’s Google Valentine’s Day logo has tons of layers behind it. It is a Valentine’s Day logo, it is a birthday logo for George Ferris, it is an animated logo, and it is one of Google’s most artistic logos I’ve seen in a while.

Google Ferris Wheel Logo Video

Here is a video of the Google Ferris Wheel in action. Notice how when you press the heart, the Ferris Wheel spins and matches up to characters:

Behind The Scenes

As Google explained in the Doodle archive, they started this Doodle with the inspiration of combining Valentine’s Day with the “celebration of love with the birthday of the engineer whose mechanical invention has filled so many hearts with wonder.” To do so, they decided to make an animated Doodle with the love story of the Ferris Wheel.

Brian Kaas, the Google Doodler started off with a rough sketch and created 16 different illustrated characters as passengers for the Ferris Wheel. They then designed comic strips for each character combination. Brian said “We hope you enjoyed the final interactive doodle and perhaps learned a little bit about love, life and Ferris Wheels.”

About George Ferris

George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. was born February 14, 1859 in Galesburg, Illinois, and died at the young age of 37 on November 22, 1896 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Ferris Wheel debute was at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

For other Valentine’s Day logos from the search industry click here.

Past Interactive Google Logos:

• Play The Frank Zamboni Google Doodle
• Google Logo Boldly Goes With Interactive Star Trek: The Original Series Doodle
• Google’s Latest Interactive Logo: The Moog Synthesizer
• Google’s Interactive “Happy Halloween” Logo For 2012
• Google Gets Interactive With Olympics Logos
• Google’s Interactive Earth Day Logo
• Early Look, Google’s Cool Interactive Jules Verne Logo Now Live
• How To Solve The Alan Turing Google Logo Puzzle
• Google Celebrates Freddie Mercury’s 65th Birthday With Google Logo
• The 2012 Google Father’s Day Logo

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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