This is fun. Looks like Google is holding a contest for kids in K-12 grades called Doodle 4 Google. According to the official Google page about the contest:

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where we invite K-12 students to reinvent Google’s homepage logo. This year we asked U.S. kids to doodle around the theme “What if…?”

You can see the 40 finalists on the Google 4 Doodle page, they are grouped in four different age groups. I’ve included my favorite from each group below, but they are all outstanding, go take a look and vote when you’re at it. The winner will replace the Google logo on the homepage on May 22.

What if…?

Grades K-3

What if a fish swallowed a Google? He might oogle, zoogle, or boogle. He might get full before the gle and eat only the Goo. Poogle! The Goo comes out. And the fish goes swimming about.

Grades 4-6

For my “what if” question, I thought and thought and the idea that kept coming into my head was, what if we could explore all of space. I mean if you think about it, we do not know that much about the universe that we live in. (This idea is especially relevant today, with this announcement pending at 1pm EST.)

Grades 7-9

What if M.C. Escher and his perspective of unreal possibilities became a mascot for Google. He took our understanding of the world around us and re-examined it using his own personal lens. He helps us see possibilities before we could imagine them. Isn’t that what Google does today by fostering our own ability to invent and share new ideas?

Grades 10-12

What if… What if wisdom and power were at your fingertips. You just might have the answer for everything - Google

Last week, I started a series of blog articles about Web design with the post A bad Web design could kill your business, and then I never finished the series. Shame on me. I am back to the topic again this week, and there will be more posts. And with the Future of Web Design conference coming up (Nov. 7-8)  in NYC, it probably makes more sense for the series to happen now, anyway, so I’ll chalk my delays up to kizmet or good timing or at least convenient procrastination.

This conference looks like it is going to be a really good one, with sessions on topics including finding inspiration, designing for moble devices, using illustration on the Web, and AJAX and design, along with a group of speakers who really know their stuff. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the Web sites of some of the experts who are speaking at the event to see if it might be possible to glean some insight into the future of Web design by examining their Web designs. Here’s what I found:

Jina Bolton - Her site is a blog (as were many of the designers’ sites), and the design looks more like a Web site design than a traditional blog. Advances in blog design will definitely be a continuing trend as blog tools are getting better, and more and more people are catching on to the fact that blog platforms, such as WordPress and Moveable Type, are the new content management systems, making publishing to the Web easier than ever.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff- Kalmikoff works for skinnyCorp, the company that founded Threadless, a t-shirt design community that is now a multi-million dollar business that sells more than 90,000 t-shirts per month. The site has a unique design that matches up with the company’s fun and off-beat brand. You’ll see that there are sections on the site for both podcasts and videos, and this is a Web design trend for the future, as firms move toward including audio and video content on their sites as part of their overall designs.

Ryan Sims- Sims is the lead designer for Virb Inc., and as is evident from the site’s design, his company is clearly focused on community. Web designs that foster community are a trend that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, as social networking grows and grows and grows.

Josh Williams- When landing on the Firewheel Design site, you’ll be greated with a message: “Firewheel Design has bolted the studio doors. We have taken an oath of secrecy. We are working on something new. If you want the skinny on our top secret project, we simply ask for your email address.” If this doesn’t make you want to submit your email address immediately, nothing will. This practice of designing a site in order to optimize audience building is a Web design and online marketing trend that will continue to gain in popularity.