Some days are just different. You can spend years creating massive projections that can be seen from the sky, but nothing quite prepares you for the day a small character you drew to relax becomes the face of a global Google campaign, launched with a tweet from CEO Sundar Pichai. This one feels different. Seeing a meditative, spare-time doodle reach a global stage is why I’m so emotional about it all. It’s a huge yay for the silly ideas that turn into something more
Gigi – Gemini Free For Students
This little character was created to help announce a big idea: that Google is making Gemini Pro, its advanced AI, free for students. It’s the story of how a wobbly, hand-drawn line came to represent a technology that is shaping our future.
The Journey of a Doodle
The character didn’t start with a brief, but on an iPad with a personal goal: to learn. For years, I’ve used personal projects like my “Gastaloops” GIF series to find my own style. This was the same. It was an ongoing series I started in my spare time to teach myself simple character design and the craft of frame-by-frame animation.
The process was entirely hands-on, using Procreate to painfully draw each frame one by one. In an era defined by digital perfection, we made a conscious choice to embrace the wobbly lines and the warmth of the human touch. The character’s imperfect form is a deliberate visual metaphor, showing that Gemini is a tool built to be a helpful, accessible “learning companion,” not a cold, intimidating machine that will replace the students.
I tapped back to my memories to find inspiration in simple doodle I used to draw on my notes when I was at uni. The little dude went through numerous iterations and hair cuts too.
From a Sketch to the World Stage
A personal doodle doesn’t become a global campaign by accident. It requires an environment like Google Creative Lab, which has a unique culture of bridging the gap between Google’s technology and its users through “fiction, emotion, and surprise”. This was only possible because of the leadership at the Lab, who believed in my illustrations and let them shine.
The launch on August 6, 2025, was breathtaking. It began with Sundar Pichai’s tweet and an official Google blog post announcing that the Google AI Pro plan—with access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Deep Research tools, and more—would be free for a year to students in the U.S., Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Brazil. The character’s simple, universal design allowed it to appear on landing pages around the world, resonating especially well in places like Japan.
Of course, this was a massive team effort. My deepest thanks go to the leadership at the Lab for believing in this idea and to the sheer talent of the entire team who brought it to life. I cannot name all the people across the different teams who enabled this to happen, but their contribution was essential.
This little drawing that saw the light of day as a Google character makes me more emotional than I can say. It’s a story about how, even in the age of artificial intelligence, the most powerful way to connect with people is through something real, something human, something with a little bit of a wobble. What a day. What a feat.
And then we revealed their name!
Gigi!