Think doodling is a waste of time? Then clearly you haven’t met Patrick Horan (18) the winner of the fourth annual Doodle 4 Google competition, whose artwork will be featured on Ireland’s Google homepage this Friday.
The student from St. Munchin’s College in Limerick won a laptop for himself and his teacher as well as a €10,000 technology grant for his school.
A Google doodle is a logo altered for special events and occasions. The drawings, and sometimes interactive animations, are designed around the logo and featured on Google’s home page for a day.
The theme of this year's contest was “I wish…”. Horan’s doodle of the iconic Google trademark featured a steampunk theme of cogs and clocks against a backdrop of the night sky, reflecting a desire to for time travel.
“Many of us look towards the stars to make a wish. I wish I could turn back time to see our world in past times,” Horan wrote of his entry.
Horan is the second student from his school in the competition’s history to win. St. Munchin’s alumnus Evan O’Sullivan Glynn won Doodle 4 Google’s first competition in 2009.
A total of 75 finalists were chosen from over 2,300 entries from across Ireland. Online voting narrowed down winners in five age groups. The overall winner was selected by Sophia Foster-Dimino, a professional doodler fro Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, whose memorable doodles included an animation of Gumby and a tribute to Jorge Luis Borges.
“Not only is it fun to tell kids about doodling and to tell kids that there is a professional future in the arts if they choose to pursue that, but it also gives us a chance to get in touch with the culture of these countries that we have to work with so often, that you don’t always get to experience firsthand,” Ms Foster-Dimino said.