This past Wednesday, I attended the second ever FAILparty—aptly entitled EconoFAIL—and caught up with the guest of honor, Yiying Lu.
She had just flown in from New York City after accepting a Shorty Award in the design category for her work as the creator of Twitter’s infamous FailWhale. Anyone who has used Twitter has surely encountered the following image several times when the service is overloaded with too may requests or tweets:
More than 300 people gathered at Mr. Smith’s bar in San Francisco to mingle and meet Yiying (@yiyinglu), who was wearing an adorable FailWhale-themed dress while handing out freebies, including autographed FailWhale cards. Twitter’s own operations engineer John Adams (@netik) was on hand to spin tunes while everyone danced, drank, and celebrated in the spirit of FAILparty—to embrace life’s failures wholeheartedly and to triumph over them. Chad Scott (@ChadScott), one of FAILparty’s founders, describes the inspiration behind this perspective here.
The scene at FAILparty.
Twitter’s very own John Adams kept the party going strong.
FAILparty cofounder Chad Scott with me.
Yiying and I got a chance to chat a bit when she wasn’t swamped by adoring fans asking for her autograph or a picture (all requests she graciously fulfilled). I was surprised to learn that she hadn’t heard of Twitter when she created FailWhale—the illustration was initially conceived as an e-card for a friend’s birthday. She was impressed with the photo-sharing service iStockPhoto and decided to upload a bulk of her work, including the now famous image, as a means of having an easily accessible online portfolio.
It caught the attention of Biz Stone (@biz), one of Twitter’s founders, and the rest is history. When Yiying asked me where I worked, she lit up when I informed her I was the digital marketing manager for Peachpit Press. “I LOVE Peachpit. I’ve bought all your books from Photoshop and Illustrator 9 to CS3 and Painter 6, 7, and 8. The design is simply amazing, the best!” I must say, the feeling is mutual, Yiying.
Me with Yiying.
**This post originally appeared on the official blog of Peachpit Press.
