Dennis Hwang

Dennis Hwang, or Hwang Jeong-mok, is a graphic artist who designs the festive logos for Google on special days. He designed his first logo for Google in honor of Bastille Day, July 14, 2000, at the request of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and has been designing the specialty logos ever since. Other logos have been designed commemorating Thanksgiving, Christmas, and unusual events such as Piet Mondrian's birthday.

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he moved to Korea when he was about five years old. His hometown was Gwacheon where he "had a very normal childhood." He went through public schools, spending six years at Gwacheon Elementary School and two years at Munwon Middle School, before returning to Knoxville and graduating from Bearden High School. His doodles during these years were frowned upon, but are now his source of income and pleasure. On a return visit to Knoxville in 2003, Hwang was awarded an Appalachian Arts Fellow Award at World's Fair Park by then-mayor Victor Ashe. Ashe proclaimed, "Mr. Hwang's work is impressioned hundreds of millions of times each week, and reaches all corners of the globe. He is arguably Knoxville's most persistent artist."

His actual position was Google's international webmaster, which made him responsible for all of their international content and kept him quite busy.

Today, he is in charge of all of Google's webmasters, and designing the logos is only about 20 percent of his job.