The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Information about Google Creative Lab is scarce. The team of designers, writers, programmers, filmmakers and producers spends, by its own estimate, 99.9% of its time making, but rarely shows the work behind it. This conversation is a rare look inside the small team that builds everything from ad campaigns to foundational design languages and interactive experiments. Design Leads Khyati Trehan and Donica Ida describe a place where roles blur – a graphic designer becomes a motion director, product thinker and tinkerer. Creative Director Matthew Carey breaks the process into two movements, playing and engineering, while Talent Lead Sheila Larkin explains why character matters more than craft when casting collaborators. Design Lead José Guizar makes the case for simplicity, and Brand Creative Director Steve Rura for putting humanity first, not just technology. One principle is consistent across the team: good work, even when shelved, rarely dies.

TBI Hi team! Could you please give us an introduction to your roles at Google Creative Lab?

JG I’m a design generalist. Product design meets brand meets all the small little details that make something be loved by humans – be it motion, sound, storytelling or silly drawings. I’ve always been interested in too many things to focus on only one, and I’ve been lucky enough to have found a gig that values that. 

KT I’m a graphic designer, but I’m slowly becoming a lot of other things; motion director, product thinker, vibe coder, tinkerer…When you sit next to brilliant strategists, writers, researchers, developers, producers, animators and filmmakers every day, they’re bound to rub off on you. 

DI I’m also a design generalist. My background is in identity, editorial and visual design. Here, I’ve touched everything from art and motion direction to product vision and brand. Our roles tend to flex with every project, and as naturally curious people, that can be incredibly satisfying. 

SR I’m a creative director with a background in brand and interactive design. So at Google, I’ve had a chance to work on both – from inventing new digital products and features to big branding and advertising initiatives. I started my career as a motion designer, and some of that carries through today when working on video art direction for broadcast and social channels. 

SL After 20 years of interviewing creative professionals, I’ve learned that the best talent focuses on how people feel, not just what a product can do. In my role at Google Creative Lab, my goal is to bring together small teams who create meaningful and beautiful work.

MC I’m a creative director with a background as a childhood musician, professional dishwasher, documentary film student, agency copywriter and amateur interactive artist. When I joined Creative Lab, my job was to tell stories about how people use our technology; now I spend my time using our technology to help people tell stories in new ways.

TBI Google Creative Lab has been described as a team that spends 99.9% of its time making. But making what, exactly?

SL Creative Lab creates everything from memorable ad campaigns like ‘Parisian Love’ to foundational design languages and interactive web experiments. We also build early prototypes and concept videos that bring wild ideas to life, inspiring Google’s engineers to turn them into reality. Ultimately, we spend our time making anything that humanises complex technology and reminds people why they love Google.

We prioritise humanity over technology.

TBI As a small team, how do you decide which ideas are worth pursuing?

SL Firstly, ideas come from everywhere; from our class of fivers (a one-year, paid, multidisciplinary fellowship for emerging creatives to work in New York or London) to our VPs and everyone in between. Sometimes ideas come from outside the creative lab from other teams at Google, and we take them far and make them real. To decide if an idea is worth pursuing, we prioritise humanity over technology. Is the creative solution genuinely helpful rather than just technically impressive? Does it resonate with people? By ‘jumping to the end’ and prototyping, we hope to achieve an impactful, emotional response.

TBI Khyati, your personal practice explores the edges of visual culture and early-stage technology. How does that experimentation feed back into your work at the Lab?

KT They both feed each other, really! Working here has been a gift to my personal practice; I used to keep a lookout for the latest and greatest in new tools and tech, and now I get to make them. When I switch off my Google brain at home, I try to wipe my memory of a tool’s obvious purpose and treat it as a blank canvas, break it, repurpose it, and then go back to work the next day with fresh eyes. In that way, I get to be both a designer and a user.

Creativity has always inspired technology, and that becomes even more true as Google makes creative tools. But tools can go only so far on their own, which is why bringing in the right partners is so key. Being a practising visual artist outside of my day job helps me keep a pulse on what’s evolving in the creative community and what’s staying the same. I keep a mental checklist of the creators, designers, filmmakers, creative coders making groundbreaking work. That list comes in very handy when we’re looking for the right collaborators and voices external to Google, so that our models, tools and experiences are shaped not just for them, but also with them.

TBI Matthew, you’ve mentioned leading teams to make things that have never been made before. What does the creative process look like when there’s no precedent to follow?

MC I think even before the creative process comes the mindset. A lot of the people at the lab are pretty unhappy solving the same type of problem over and over. Having a novelty-seeking brain makes chasing the never-been-done thing really attractive and also necessary for sanity. So, if you gather talented multidisciplinary people with that restless mindset together, the process for each project tends to figure itself out along the way, with some gentle guidance. That said, there are generally two complementary patterns I’ve consistently observed in our creative process, no matter the project. First, playing and second, engineering.

First of their kind ideas emerge from unpredictable places, so we play and experiment and share and build off of each other. Sort of like making up games in the schoolyard. It helps us find the edge of technology, using any medium to make little sketches or prototypes that show a glimmer of something that makes our brains tickle. Over time, these glimmers start to coalesce into a more singular idea that’s attractive to everyone…then we switch gears.

Once we know what we’re doing, it becomes about operational excellence, creative engineering and facilitating the process toward impeccable craft. We’re often responsible for every single nook and cranny of a project, and it becomes a shared responsibility distributed across the specialised strengths and passions of each individual. We refine every interaction, pixel, moment, word, line of code until it is just as exciting as it was in our imagination.

In short, Be Restless > Play > Prototype > Share > Compare > Coalesce > Craft > Perfect > Publish...Then get restless again.

TBI Steve and Donica, how do you balance Google’s established brand language with the experimental nature of the Lab’s work?

SR Google is arguably one of the most recognised brands in the world, and we’re very aware of the primary signals that make it so. The ‘G’ and our four colours are essential elements. Without them, people may not see Google. We’re careful not to obscure important cues like these, even as we lean into the Lab’s experimental spirit. In the early, iterative stages of a project, we permit ourselves to push boundaries, knowing we might go too far. It’s often through that process that we stumble upon something fresh that can be brought back into the established brand. The nature of each project also influences our approach to brand language. A campaign for Search needs to be unmistakably Google, while a collaboration with independent artists allows us to be much less conventionally branded.

DI Yeah, it really is just that – a balance. We’re considerate of context and the fact that we carry a lot of brand recognition, we can use to our advantage. Sometimes that means we don’t have to lean in too hard on our core brand and can push the work into new and interesting visual territories. Google, too, has always been a tinkering kind of company, so a lot of our experimental work already feels inherently ‘us.’ It’s a solid base to build upon. 

And, while our core brand is established, our broader language is constantly evolving as our company, our technology and our audience evolve. Our needs change constantly. So, the goal isn’t ever to follow a rigid manual, but to make sure that no matter how far we push the work, it still feels like Google.

TBI José, how does product thinking influence the design decisions you make?

JG One thing I’ve developed after a decade at Google, working on products meant for millions of people, is an instinct for simplicity and clarity. Would a high schooler, a lawyer, a new mom and my uncle in Mexico all understand what this is, what it does, and how to use it? It’s much more challenging than the niche. You really need to strip back to find common denominators that most humans can relate to. In my mind, this applies not only to products but to pretty much everything we design. 

Things can change very quickly at Google, so we have to always stay flexible.

TBI With such varied expertise across the team, how do you structure collaboration on a single project?

SL We aim to align opportunities with the skill sets and interests of each individual on the team. We also intentionally include less ‘obvious’ collaborators for a diversity of expertise and perspective.

KT Sometimes it works the other way, too! There are enough internal share-outs and chatter at the Micro Kitchen (Google’s self-serve space for beverages and snacks) to know about all the project-going-ons at a time. I’ve more than once inserted myself in a project because it was way too interesting not to be involved in.

SR A strong combination of project leads is also important. 2-4 people with different strengths and responsibilities help keep each project running day-to-day. We can quickly adjust our process as we go, augmenting or slimming down the team depending on how it’s going. Things can change very quickly at Google, so we have to always stay flexible.

TBI What’s been the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from a project that didn’t go as planned?

JG A large portion of the work we do doesn’t get to see the light of day. It’s the nature of a small team balancing experimentation with the realities of a giant company. It can really bum you down unless you learn to let go and to not be too precious. The lesson, though, is that good work rarely dies. A lot of ideas have sat on an imaginary ‘shelf’ until months or years later, someone references “that thing Donica made that would really work for this.”

DI I can’t think of a single project I’ve worked on that went perfectly ‘as planned.’ It’s the nature of an iterative, sometimes messy process. But perfection isn’t the point, and very quickly you learn to let go of that expectation in exchange for stronger outcomes and broader impact. Staying nimble forces you to lock arms with your team, trust your instincts, and focus on what actually matters. The work usually ends up better for it.

TBI What do you hope people take away from the work that comes out of Google Creative Lab?

JG My most honest non-corporate-fluff take – the reason Google has been a beloved brand is because most of the things Google puts out are legit helpful and make people’s lives better. I think the hope for the work that we do is in part that it stays that way, and in part to help everyday people understand how daunting new technology can be helpful in their own lives.

DI I hope our work is helpful and makes people feel considered. Even a brief moment of joy, or clarity, or connection would be a win.

SR I really hope people see humanity first, not just technology. We try to work on what actually matters to people, bending new tools toward something they’ll find truly meaningful or useful.