Yiying Lu makes splash with Twitter's 'fail whale'

Yiying Lu's most famous illustration thus far is linked with failure - and that has turned out to be a good thing.

The young artist is the bubbly brainchild behind Twitter's "fail whale," the image that appears when Twitter is overloaded and can't function. In the picture, a flock of birds carry an enormous, smiling whale over the water.

Through Twitter, the whale has become a sign of the times. This year, the popular San Francisco microblogging service sent an astonishing 25 billion messages of 140 characters or fewer and added 100 million new users.

Though the fail whale doesn't appear as frequently as it once did on Twitter, it lives on. It has inspired a fan club, two parties and at least one tattoo. Last month, for the premiere of his new show, Conan O'Brien commissioned Lu to create the "pale whale," which depicts the comedian riding on top of a whale as it is being carried by birds.

The whale has also helped part the waves for a new startup, Walls 360, an online store that sells prints and wall graphics, including a line of fail whales and its friends. Lu, a co-founder, was in San Francisco this month to kick off the site and hold her first solo art exhibit at the Hotel des Arts.

That her illustration has come to represent a website going down is a bit ironic, given that Lu is anything but a downer. Lu is all smiles, exuberant and effusive, and she peppers her conversations with quotes from famous people, from Conan O'Brien to Pablo Picasso.

Doodling takes hold

Born and raised in Shanghai, Lu attended a technology high school and had no intention of practicing art. But she found herself doodling and spending hours each day browsing art books.

"I wasn't born for that," she said about studying math and science. "I could do it if I tried really hard, but I knew my heart was somewhere else."

In 2002, she moved to Sydney to attend college. While in school, she drew the first iteration of "Lifting a Dreamer," using an elephant instead of a whale. (She had read about the elephant representing a person's higher self.) She sent it to her friends as a way to tell them how she wished she could be there in person to help celebrate their birthdays but couldn't because she was overseas.

"It is a positive happy image that has nothing to do with failure," she said. "It was an image that carries a sincere wish to my friends overseas. My wish is so big, so heavy. I can't fly over to attend your birthday, but these birds are carrying my biggest wish."

In 2006, she was studying abroad again, this time in London, and wanted to send a similar message to her friends in Australia. She didn't want to use an elephant again, but needed another animal that was heavy. She settled on a whale, a reference to New South Wales, her home in Australia.

In her final year in school in late 2006, she uploaded that illustration and a few others to iStockphoto, which licenses art, photographs and video clips. She saw it as a way to share her portfolio online, because she didn't have a website at the time, and to network with others.

Image a phenomenon

That's how Twitter co-founder Biz Stone found and licensed the image. Each time Twitter reached overcapacity and collapsed under its own weight, Lu's whale appeared.

In 2008, that started to happen a lot. A banner year for the San Francisco startup, events such as the presidential election and the Beijing Summer Olympics helped drive traffic and attention to the service.

Tom Limongello, an early Twitter user in New York, started taking notice of the fail whale, even making a T-shirt and wearing it to a tech party. He reached out to Lu and with other fail whale fans made a box of T-shirts and sent them to Twitter's headquarters. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, though he had mixed feelings about it, tweeted about it, and soon the fail whale phenomenon reached new heights. "Then it went nuts," Limongello said.

Initially Lu felt dismayed that her illustration was being associated with failure. Lu, who has since removed her art from iStockphoto, was paid a small one-time licensing fee, but did not earn any royalties for its repeated use. She also found people copying it without her permission.

But ultimately she decided to focus on the positive, such as the doors it has opened for her.

Twitter licensed a picture that appears when Twitter suspends an account for spam or other strange activity, introducing the "foul owl" in late 2008. ("It's the 'Goodnight Owl,' " Lu said.) Last year, she met Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Silicon Valley entrepreneur guru and author Guy Kawasaki asked her to create an image that shows him being lifted up by butterflies. A few weeks ago, she met Conan O'Brien at a taping in Los Angeles.

Diversion during crash

Lu is excited about the prospect of Walls 360, which she sees as a new medium that could help bring art to the masses and perhaps even eventually allow people to bring the virtual to the real, such as sticking their tweets on the wall.

"I look at it as a positive thing," she said. "If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have these experiences that money can't buy."

In fact, Lu has a suggestion for all Web startups: They should commission their own fail whale - that is, a piece of art to appear each time their site goes down.

"What a great moment to show people art. 'We are working on the problem. In the meantime, enjoy this happy picture,' " she said.

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This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle