Design has suddenly become the big talking point in the playground of The Knox School in Melbourne. Students from Year 4 through to Year 10 are all drawing, designing, imagining and painting themed Google Logo’s as part of the Doodle for Google initiative. It’s an exercise that has made art class the most popular period of the week.

“It’s just wonderful,” Knox School Art Teacher Steve Kearney said. “The whole exercise has got the whole school talking about design.”

The competition, which was launched by Google on Monday, invites school kids from around the country to design a new themed logo for the popular search engine. Inspired by the topic ‘My Australia’, students will be challenged to portray their own image of Australia using the Google typeface. The winning student’s design will then appear on the Google Australia homepage for Australia Day next year and the school will win $10,000 worth of technology equipment.

For The Knox School the competition has become a central platform to test out the creativity of the students and implement a variety of curriculum requirements at the same time.

“We have Year 7 doing folio drawings as part of their designs and we have the older kids going out and taking photos of letters that appear in the street, on buildings and in public to get them to start thinking about how letters appear as typefaces,” Kearney said.

Kearney believes that the high profile of Google introduces students to the subtlety of interface design and engages students who wouldn’t normally be involved with the art curriculum offered.

The school has also seen evidence of the competition spilling over into other areas of the curriculum with students now sharing their viewpoints on what Australia means to each of them. “It’s opening students up to another person's perspective and it's inspiring discussion,” Kearney says.