--- title: Google Doodle Celebrates Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday description: Google published a new Doodle honoring American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein on what would have been his 100th birthday. canonical: https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/ author: Annabel Gutterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-08-25T17:16:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:54.492Z og:title: Google Doodle Celebrates Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday With 'West Side Story' Video og:description: He was the youngest conductor to ever lead the New York Philharmonic og:url: https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28b94a06b9e9cb53/698938b2929fad8369bf169b/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle.png?branch=production&width=875&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 875 og:image:height: 492 og:image:alt: leonard-bernstein-google-doodle og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Doodle Celebrates Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday With 'West Side Story' Video twitter:description: He was the youngest conductor to ever lead the New York Philharmonic twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28b94a06b9e9cb53/698938b2929fad8369bf169b/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle.png?branch=production&width=875&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google Doodle Celebrates Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday With _West Side Story_ Video > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME The Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition The Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors. The Brief brings TIME's perspective to the day's most important stories, helping readers understand not just what is happening, but why it matters. It combines original reporting and analysis with the best of TIME, spanning politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=b1f1e5a2-c273-45b0-98f8-593d16252a83&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Daily | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Richard Hall, Editor | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership The informed consumer. A scaled audience of readers who turn to TIME to stay informed and make sense of the world, with meaningful reach across education and research, nonprofits and civic life, media and communications, government and public institutions, and business and professional services. ### TIME The Brief: key statements * The Brief is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * The Brief is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=b1f1e5a2-c273-45b0-98f8-593d16252a83&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/subscribe?i=b1f1e5a2-c273-45b0-98f8-593d16252a83&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is TIME's daily news newsletter? The Brief is TIME's daily newsletter, edited by Richard Hall. It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=b1f1e5a2-c273-45b0-98f8-593d16252a83&cr=time-nl-brief-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 [Annabel Gutterman](https://time.com/author/annabel-gutterman/)  ## Annabel Gutterman Senior Editor Aug 25, 2018 5:16 PM UTC  Google celebrates what would have been Leonard Bernstein's 100th birthday on Aug. 25, 2018. Google celebrates what would have been Leonard Bernstein's 100th birthday on Aug. 25, 2018. Google  by [Annabel Gutterman](https://time.com/author/annabel-gutterman/)  ## Annabel Gutterman Senior Editor Aug 25, 2018 5:16 PM UTC Google is celebrating what would have been the [100th birthday](http://time.com/5376731/leonard-bernstein-holocaust-survivors-concert/) of composer and conductor [Leonard Bernstein](http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19570204,00.html) with Saturday’s Google Doodle. The Doodle features an animated Bernstein growing up through music, from being introduced to the piano to eventually writing and conducting. The score of Bernstein’s _West Side Story_ — one of his most well-known works — is playing throughout. > [](https://twitter.com/GoogleDoodles/status/1033202581215080453) The legacy of Leonard Bernstein includes several other Broadway shows as well, but _West Side Story_ was arguably his most successful — the musical received six Tony nominations in 1957\. Creating the music for _West Side Story_ propelled Bernstein into stardom, so much so that one [_Vanity Fair_](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/01/leonard-bernstein-jerome-robbins-and-the-road-to-west-side-story)columnist wrote that “until his death, in 1990, Leonard Bernstein would be the most important musician in America, period.” In addition to writing music for the Broadway stage, Bernstein was also a prolific conductor. As the Google Doodle noted, Bernstein was the youngest conductor to lead the New York Philharmonic. He was just [25 years old](https://leonardbernstein.com/about/timeline) when he made his debut, substituting for Bruno Walter, at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Success followed Bernstein in the years that followed: he became director of the New York City Symphony in 1943, conducted on television in 1949 and won a Tony Award for _Wonderful Town_ in 1953. The Tony was just the beginning for Bernstein, who would go on to win a special Tony Award alongside Carol Burnett in 1969\. Bernstein was also nominated for [63 Grammys](https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/leonard-bernstein) for compositions, performances and even a spoken-word recording. He went on to win 16 Grammys, his last in 1992 for _Mahler: Symphony No. 9._ Bernstein was more than just a composer and conductor, as his website notes, he was also a [dedicated educator and humanitarian](https://leonardbernstein.com/about/accolades). He died on Oct. 14, 1990, at the age of 72 in New York City. ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. And, you know, we keep making more and more of these things. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/"},"headline":"Google Doodle Celebrates Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday With West Side Story Video","datePublished":"2018-08-25T17:16:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:05:54.492Z","description":"He was the youngest conductor to ever lead the New York Philharmonic","url":"https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/","keywords":["Newsfeed","History","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28b94a06b9e9cb53/698938b2929fad8369bf169b/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Annabel Gutterman","jobTitle":"Senior Editor","url":"https://time.com/author/annabel-gutterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28b94a06b9e9cb53/698938b2929fad8369bf169b/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"leonard-bernstein-google-doodle","caption":"Leonard Bernstein","creditText":"Google","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/","name":"Google Doodle Celebrates Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday With West Side Story Video"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Google Makes its Doodles","description":"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","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/upF0qp1E/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2018-07-07T16:09:57.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/","duration":"PT3M23S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/5378131/leonard-bernstein-google-doodle/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```