A short interview with Yiying Lu, the Australian artist behind the image, now popularly known as the "Fail Whale" that is displayed on Twitter whenever there is a service outage. Lu originally uploaded her whimsical creation to a stock image site from which Twitter founder Biz Stone purchased it for a few dollars (!!!) and since then it has become "as iconic as any corporate logo, and far more beloved."
1) What was the inspiration for the whale and birds illustration?
It was initially created as a birthday e-card for an overseas friend of mine when I was in my last year study at University - expressing my: Sorry I am failed to be there across the ocean, but here is a little console from my heart. The whale is a self metaphor. Hence the original name I had for that artwork was “lifting a dreamer”.
[Via]