---
title: The Designer Who Gave Us Fail Whale and Showing The Whale
date: 2008-06-26T16:32:18Z
modified: 2008-06-26T16:32:18Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/the-designer-who-gave-us-fail-whale-and-showing-the-whale/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 1518
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2008-06-26T16:32:18Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

![](http://www.yiyinglu.com/showcase/30. Illustration/05. Personal Illustrations/50.gif)

I had assumed Twitter was using designs it had paid for for its Fail page, but apparently not. Courtesy of John Wilson’s comment on my last blog about Twitter, a couple of hours ago, came news the famous whale is a stock shot from [here](http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/animals/animal-backgrounds/4611821-lift-a-dreamer.php?id=4611821).

[Yiying Lu](http://www.yiyinglu.com/sc/illustration) is the fantastic designer behind the image we all see, and love, so much. Frankly I think Twitter should use more of their work to give us some variety, and also give Yiying a lot more credit. How about a service sleeping owl?

With respect to celebrating downtime here is a link to the [Fail Whale Fan Club](http://failwhale.com/) (“_Celebrating Twitter and our favorite error page cetacean_“), funnily enough it seems it was started by [someone I follow](http://techmonkeydesign.com/), [Sean O’Steen](http://twitter.com/seanosteen). I love the fact [Tom Limongello](http://twitter.com/tlimongello) [sent the Twitter team t-shirts](http://failwhale.com/2008/06/t-shirts-and-thanks-sent-to-the-folks-at-twitter/)!

He told them:

> FailWhale is quickly becoming a brand, and that is a very good thing. Twitter has proven that it does a great job of bridging the online world to the physical world, in fact it’s better than any service I’ve ever used. I wore my FailWhale t-shirt at Internet Week in NYC and that simple test returned an immediately favorable response. I wanted to help the FailWhale succeed as a symbol, even though what it represents has not been completely defined (also a good thing, because you can define this to benefit Twitter’s image as a service that supports all of its users).

Perhaps one day we’ll be able to rename it the Scale Whale… but I am not going to hold my breath. Best of all- guess who is now on twitter… [Yiying](http://twitter.com/yiyinglu). Subscribed. I must admit I am thinking about Greenmonk logo possibilities… Certainly Yiying is now going to win a lot of work based on Twitter’s use of the image, which is GREAT, and proves the value of open content. There are so many great angles to this story. A community taking control of the brand, an artist creating a visual language that defines the way we talk about a service, the celebration of downtime that I mentioned earlier…

The Fail Whale is a classic social object. I wonder what [Hugh MacLeod](http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004265.html) will make of it.

I think a lot of web people are going to start using Yiying’s art. I know its now on the agenda as an image source for a chinposin Friday. To Whit To Who.

![](http://www.yiyinglu.com/showcase/30. Illustration/05. Personal Illustrations/10.gif)