ALPINE — When Hayden Walker's class at Mountainville Academy was assigned to create a design for Google's home page, the sixth-grader took it seriously.
The design he spent two weeks drawing went on to win Google's Doodle 4 Google regional contest, beating out thousands of other submissions and winning Hayden and his parents a trip to New York City. On Tuesday, representatives from Google came to a school assembly that was held to recognize his work.
"I was really shocked," said Hayden, 12, of Lehi, "but I thought my art was pretty good."
His rendition of the Google logo, called a "doodle," spells the company's name using planets, spacecraft and aliens.
After watching news coverage of environmental and climate issues, Hayden said he "thought it would be a good idea to explore space for new planets to inhabit."
Hayden's doodle is one of 40 remaining from the 33,000 submissions Google received and will be displayed for six weeks in the Smithsonian Institution.
If his doodle wins the final contest, Hayden will be awarded a $15,000 scholarship, Mountainville Academy will receive a $25,000 computer lab and the doodle will be displayed on Google's home page May 27.
Google representative Lisa Jiang said doodles have been a company trademark for almost as long as Google has been in business.
"About three years ago, we decided we really wanted to let children design their own doodles using the Google logo as their baseline," Jiang said.
Each year there is a theme, she said, and this time it was: "If I could do anything, I would …"
It was this theme that led Hayden to create his design.
"If I could do anything, I would explore space for new planets," he told his schoolmates, standing in front of a larger-than-life copy of his doodle. "Maybe they won't have the same problem as Earth does with global warming and pollution."
The next round of judging will be done by the public online and will narrow the field to four submissions. A winner then will be selected from those four. Anyone can vote for a doodle online at www.google.com/doodle4google.
e-mail: jritter@desnews.com