May 13, 2009 NH teen hopes doodle wins over Google users Play video

(NECN: Lauren Collins, Rochester, NH) - It began as a homework assignment: design a Google logo that captures your hope for the future, a design that could wind up atop the ubiquitous website.

Spaulding High School art teacher Jen Daly says her students were excited because "they all knew what Google was and thought it would be amazing to have their logo on the Google website."

For senior and life long artist Meaghan Parker, the task was simple because, "I think we all know things we would like to have happen and change."

On Monday, Meaghan found out she'd drawn her way past 26,000 submissions to be a semi-finalist in the Doodle4Google competition.

Her logo is intricate and covers a broad range of topics. As she describes, "the 'G' is for peace love and joy, the 'O' is also for peace, the second one is for recycling, the 'G' was for love, the tree was another environmental thing, and the 'E' is for gay rights."

They are all causes this 17-year-old says are important to her generation and which she's excited to promote through her beloved craft. Art, she believes, is "a form of communication. That's what I want to use it for, as kind of stuff like this where I can use it to get a message out or get people to pay attention to something. "

Of the 40 semi-finalists, Google users get to vote for the final four. Meagan and her friends plan to plaster the city of Rochester with Doodle4Google campaign fliers. Voting

is open until the 18th. A panel of judges will then select the winning design from the final four and post that logo on Google's homepage on the 21st.

Daly is "really hoping this works out for her because I can't imagine a anybody else who would benefit from all of this (more) than Meaghan."

The winning artist gets a $15,000 scholarship. Meaghan would like to use that to attend the New Hampshire Institute of Art. But as to what kind of career she'd like to fashion out of her passion? She says, "it's a question we get asked a lot as seniors. 'What do we want to be?' and I think I'm still deciding but I want to make a difference."