2025
Professional
Year:
Project Type:
Overview
For a little over a year, I worked as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) for Google at their Durham office. There is a sizable community of SREs working at the RDU site, and at the beginning of 2025 local leaders announced they were seeking a logo to represent the group.
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I designed a submission, which then won a popular vote against three other Googler-designed logos.
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The logo has been adopted and used to promote the organization with branded swag.
Design Iterations
I iterated through ideas before landing on the winning logo, exploring themes and constraints.
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Here were my key parameters:
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Thematically represents the SRE role, a job commonly branded with dragons at Google
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References Durham or the triangle
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Include 'SRE' and 'RDU' in the design
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Is evocative of Google without using the company name or any official logos
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I quickly decided on using a bull to represent Durham. I thought a minotaur might be a clever combo of a bull and the mythical nature of dragons, but decided that was too esoteric for a logo. I then played with a shield shape since SREs are responsible for defending against failures, but felt it looked a bit dated for the Google brand.
The Outcome
Ultimately, I went with the dragon-and-bull design.
The borderless style is more flexible to use, lets the letters to be larger, and fits with the Google brand. It is arranged so that the dragon appears to be escorting the bull, the goal of which is to evoke the "protector" aspect of the SRE role. Additionally, the vertical leveling of the creatures matches the acronyms to their right—the dragon for 'SRE' on top, and the bull for 'RDU' on the bottom.
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Though I won the vote, I am not yet satisfied with the design. Due to low budget and a time constraint, I had to use ready-made art assets. As such, the styles of the two creatures are not a perfect match, and the combined composition of the bodies could be improved.
