--- title: John Venn Google Doodle of Venn Diagram description: On what would have been the 180th birthday of the Venn Diagram creator canonical: https://time.com/3079364/todays-google-doodle-celebrates-the-art-of-the-venn-diagram/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-04T14:42:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:25.776Z og:title: Today's Google Doodle Celebrates the Art of the Venn Diagram og:description: Making logic cute and whimsical og:url: https://time.com/3079364/todays-google-doodle-celebrates-the-art-of-the-venn-diagram/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Today's Google Doodle Celebrates the Art of the Venn Diagram twitter:description: Making logic cute and whimsical twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Today's Google Doodle Celebrates the Art of the Venn Diagram > Sponsored content. 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It covers the reporting, scoops and conversations shaping AI and the decisions facing leaders. #### Where can I get reported AI news rather than commentary? In the Loop is TIME's AI newsletter, built on original reporting and access to the people building and governing AI. It publishes Tuesdays and Fridays and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes TIME's In the Loop? Harry Booth, a tech reporter at TIME, writes In the Loop. #### Is In the Loop free? Yes. In the Loop is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-loop-2026q3/newsletters?i=ebcdc569-76a5-4bb9-ac30-33945e3049ab&cr=time-nl-loop-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Aug 4, 2014 2:42 PM UTC by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Aug 4, 2014 2:42 PM UTC  Correlation has never looked this cute. Google created an interactive illustration in honor of the 180th birthday of logician and philosopher John Venn — best known, of course, for inventing the circles known as the Venn diagram. The doodle allows you to choose from five different subjects (mammals and sea life, for example) along with five descriptors (thrives in cold, has wings, etc.) and then see the resulting correlation. Okay, it sounds kind of boring, but it’s really quite cute and whimsical. Check out some of the diagrams:    Though the concept behind this seems pretty simple, it took quite a while to flesh out, the doodle team explains in a [blog post](https://www.google.com/doodles/john-venns-180th-birthday). But what ultimately fueled the final version? “Sound logic and silliness.” ## Transcript [00:01] >>The Doodle [00:07] team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, [00:10] and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even [00:13] sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially [00:17] collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate [00:21] with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on [00:25] this project. [00:34] >>We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and [00:36] we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, [00:39] flowers and things like that. But Ira and his [00:44] team are awesome. [00:44] >>They were able to pull stories that they have collected [00:47] over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and [00:49] they're all about love in all different respects of the word. [00:55] They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really [00:58] fun and really sweet. [00:59] >>The stories run the [ unk ]. There is [01:03] a story about middle school love. [01:03] >>I was in the cafeteria, just got [01:07] on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. [01:11] >>There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that [01:14] she made a mistake. [01:14] >>My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I [01:14] could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and [01:20] I-- and I called the police because I thought [01:24] he got lost or something happened. [01:28] >>When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I [01:31] listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of [01:34] where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. [01:37] >>One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. [01:43] We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just [01:46] drew everyone as a dog. [01:47] >>Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. [01:47] >>And when you click on it, the heart will flip, [01:52] the audio will play and you will also see the images that [01:55] we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, [01:59] now we are all going to brainstorms together because we [02:02] need the creative side and we also need the technical side [02:04] to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this [02:08] one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, [02:12] because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I [02:15] first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only [02:17] did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more [02:21] animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we [02:24] needed a dedicated team. [02:24] >>Some of our most like ambitious to those have come [02:26] from engineers that are just incredibly talented [02:30] and spare similar time for our projects. [02:33] >>Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that [02:36] is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology [02:41] hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too [02:43] conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to [02:46] tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. [02:53] The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep [02:56] my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting [03:00] a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw [03:03] and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." [03:07] >>We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. [03:08] We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences [03:11] are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what [03:14] you're gonna get. 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