Twitter fail whale artist creates the Conan O'Brien pale whale

Creating the Conan Pale Whale to celebrate US talk show host Conan O’Brien’s return to TV was a dream come true for Sydney artist Yiying Lu.

Twenty-something Lu first found fame as the artist behind the Twitter Fail Whale - it’s her image Twitter users see when the site crashes. The company has since bought other illustrations by Lu, including the Goodnight Owl.

Now she has designed the Conan Pale Whale for O’Brien to ride triumphantly into the post-NBC Tonight Show era. He tweeted Lu personally to thank her.

“Thanks to @Yiying Lu, I can finally come clean about my terrible whale riding addiction,” the Tweet said.

O’Brien’s company Team Coco emailed Lu in August to see if she would be interested.

“I was so excited because I have been a fan of Conan for a long time, I just love him,” Lu said. “He is so random and funny but also such a kind person. It was dream come true when they contacted me - they’d already talked to Twitter about the idea and were really excited, and it was just a matter of whether I wanted to do it or not. I was like ‘hell yeah I want to do it, I have to do it - it’s Conan’.”


Lu said she first felt a connection with O’Brien when she watched his final episode of The Tonight Show.

“People really wanted to hear what he thought about what NBC did to him because they thought it was unfair,” Lu said. “He was asked, before you leave do you have any words for us, and he said ‘the only thing I want to ask the young people to do is don’t be cynical’ and I hate cynicism, I think it doesn’t lead you anywhere good. Then he said, ‘believe me, if you work hard and be kind, amazing things will happen’ and that just blew my mind.

“It’s been a hard time since graduating, when you come to the industry as a fresh graduate, it’s tough. I’ve been lucky to have great clients but I’ve encountered some weird things as well and seen my work being ripped off and that can be really hard. So Conan’s words have become my motto and really kept me going.”

On December 2, Lu is launching her first US solo art show in San Francisco, as well as Walls360, a new start-up company she cofounded.

“Basically Walls360 is like a real world version of Flicker, where individual artists can upload their work and it ends up going onto a real wall,” Lu said. “It’s repositionable art work. The tagline of the company is ‘Arts for everywhere’.”

Source

(Thanks Anne)

LTLPrints Interview with YiYing Lu

There is a massive interview with Yiying Lu at LTLPrints and in addition to the interview, there are samples of most of the big projects she has been involved with.  I really like the new designs she's done.  I won't bother copying the whole thing here so click the link to the right to get redirected to the interview... More details>>>

Next 100 Emerging Leaders

The Weekend Australian Magazine's Next 100 Emerging Leaders.  I went through all the nominees and found the ones below.  I can't find a 'normal' pic of Yiying, maybe there isn't one cos she definitely doesn't seem normal but hey, that's the way we like her!

Culture

Nam Le

When award-winning writer Nam Le's first book, The Boat, was published last year it was an astounding critical and commercial success. "I hope to keep writing," says Le. "In different genres as well. And travelling. Other than that, I'm not sure. I'd love to give other (non-writing) things a go as well." The former lawyer and Vietnamese refugee grew up in Melbourne, graduating with a BA (honours) and LLB (honours) from Melbourne University. His first job was a toss-up between "working at a Doc Marten shop in the city or a Yellow Pages Direct call centre". Now living in the UK and working as writer-in-residence at the University of East Anglia, Le is also fiction editor of the US Harvard Review. Like many writers, he finds inspiration in everyday events:"Music, movies, real-life stories. I'm constantly amazed by the things people do to bet by, to be of use to each other."


Thinking

Dorjee Sun

Dorjee Sun lists homes as "Sydney, Singapore, Indonesia, USA, Suriname, planes, airports and hotels", a taste of the frequent flyer points he has racked up while brokering carobn offset deals in developing nations. After graduating in commerce and law from UNSW, Sydney-born Sun found success in online recruitment and web-media startups before his passion for the environment took him to the jungles of Indonesia. In 2007, the governors of Aceh, Papua and Papua Barat signed an agreement giving Sun rights to seek carbon credits to minimise deforestation across 50 million hectares of their land; he then jetted to the US to sell the credits to companies such as Merril Lynch. The deal won an award from Environmental Finance magazine and is the subject of The Burning Season, which opens in Australian cinemas in July(passed).

Innovation

Gail Sorronda

Winning the 2004 Qld Mercedes-Benz Start-Up Awards with her debut collection,"Angel at My Table", marked the start of a beautiful career for Gail Sorronda (formerly Gail Reid). "The award enabled me to show at Australian Fashion Week," she says. "It was the catalyst moment that launched me into a career as a fashion designer." Since then, the QUT Fine Arts (Fashion) graduate has opened her own store in Brisbane and been invited to be a part of the Designers For Target line. Her bold black and white designs have won international praise for their bold structure and drama, appearing in fashion magazines and worn by celebrities. Sorronda, who recently presented at AFW, is now living in Paris where she says she's developing a capsule winter collection between Paris and Italy".

Yiying Lu

In 2008, an image of a whale held aloft by birds became an overnight sensation on online social networking site Twitter. The illustration had been created by Sydney artist Yiying Lu for an electronic birthday card and was picked up from a stock photo site by Twitter founder Biz Stone. Almost instantly the "Fail Whale", as it became known, was adopted by the Twitter community as an icon. Lu became as popular as her creation, winning first place in the Design category of New York's Shorty Awards. Born in Shanghai, Lu got her degree from the University of Technology, Sydney, with a year of exchange study at London's Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. She has since worked as a design tutor at UTS, as well as establishing an art and design studio. "The next step will be developing 'Yiying Lu' into a brand," she says.

Raymond Choo

Fighting cyber crime was a natural progression for Singapore-born Dr Kim Kwang (Raymond) Choo, who started his working life as an officer in the Singapore Police Force. "I always knew that I would be in some form of public service as I like to help people," says Choo, who has a PhD in IP from Queensland of Technology. Choo spends his days hunting cyber criminals as a research analyst of high tech crime and money laundering at the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra. He was recently awarded a Fulbright Professional Scholarship tountertake a three-month study at Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justic and the Palo Alto Research Centre, in the United States. "My research aims to contribute to neutralising crime opportunities before they arise," he says.
The Australian

A panel comprising Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey, ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb, former Olympics swimming champion, Lisa Forrest, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations secratary Lisa Paul, demographer Bernard Salt, Australian Industry Group chief Heather Ridout and cancer researcher and Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Frazer, selected the winners.

Unfortunately none of the above won, but with emerging leaders like these I'm sure we will be well represented in the future and hopefully we can also get some nominees in the other categories.

Creator of Twitter's Fail Whale Image

"Meet Yiying Lu, a bubbly Sydney designer who enjoys turning technological failures into an art form. Simon Tsang reports.

Yiying Lu is responsible for one of the most iconic images circulating the world's social media scene. Her illustration depicting a smiling white whale being lifted out of the ocean by a flock of little birds has spawned not only plenty of imitations but, incredibly, a huge fan base.

Incredible, because the image only appears when the micro-blogging site, Twitter, has failed under the sheer load of its popularity. It's a failure message that conveys a lot of meaning in an instant. The illustration has since been dubbed the "Fail Whale"............................."

Read more
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/how-fail-whale-became-a-hit/2009/04/27/1240684398600.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

She has also been named one of the 100 Emerging Leaders in Innovation of Weekend Australian Magazine's Next 100 series.

Her official site: http://yiyinglu.com/