Failure™ Magazine

Yiying Lu: The Failure Interview

Creator of Twitter’s Fail Whale presents her first solo exhibit.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Life

When it was finished did you have a sense that the Fail Whale image might be something special?
I did. I was really happy with the form and how the whale looked. It calmed me a bit. I felt it sent positive greetings to my friends.

When did you find out that the image had been adopted by Twitter?
In May 2008 a Twitter user emailed me and asked if I was aware that the image was being used by Twitter.

And how did Twitter discover it?
When I finished the image—called Lifting up a Dreamer—I posted it on iStockphoto.com, both as a networking opportunity and to showcase my work. [Twitter co-founder] Biz Stone found it on iStockphoto and decided to use it for Twitter’s “site down” message.

Who gave Fail Whale its name?
If you go to whatisfailwhale.info you can see the tweet from Nick Quaranto in New York [on Twitter @qrush], who had a eureka moment. He said, “The Twitter whale needs a name. I propose Failwhale.”

How did you feel when you first saw Lifting up a Dreamer on Twitter?
I had mixed feelings. It’s funny that my final year major project was a fortune cookie conveying the message: This page cannot be displayed. It’s almost the same sort of idea, as the whale is also saying: This page cannot be displayed.

But at the same time it was quite dreadful because it was the beginning of my career as a professional designer and now everything I do is associated with failure [laughs]. Yet it was good to know that somebody appreciated my work.

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