Like a perfectly brewed cup of bubble tea – (this statement will make more sense later!) – the creative journey of artist Lu Yiying is a delicious combination of flavors. Born in Shanghai, educated in Sydney and London, and ultimately finding her creative home in San Francisco, Lu Yiying’s portfolio reflects her timeless ability to communicate across languages and cultures.
But at the same time, Lu’s work bears the unmistakable stamp of Silicon Valley’s rise to cultural celebrity. She is best known for her legendary “fail whale” illustration, which became the mascot for Twitter’s service outage in 2008. Given her early visibility, it could be said that Lu’s artistic career has evolved in tandem with Twitter’s success.
Twitter Fail Whale, originally titled “Lifting a Dreamer,” depicts a white beluga whale being hoisted into the air by eight orange birds on ropes. The work symbolizes the emotional weight of distance and the desire to be close to loved ones. Early Twitter users resonated with the meaning of the whale and it garnered widespread fan support, sparking a chain of events that ultimately led to Lu settling in San Francisco.
In 2016, Lu once again brought a human touch to Silicon Valley by advocating for the addition of a dumpling emoji when she and a friend were texting about dinner plans and were frustrated that they couldn’t find the emoji.
She went on to popularize and design five more food emojis in 2017, and you can thank her for the much-loved Dumpling 🥟, Bubble Tea 🧋, Chopsticks 🥢, Takeaway Box 🥡, and Fortune Cookie 🥠 emojis, as well as the Peacock emoji 🦚, which was introduced a year later (2018).
When NFTs emerged in 2021, Lu found herself in the thick of it, selling limited edition and 1/1 NFTs on multiple platforms including OpenSea, and Lu said she donated profits from her “Whale of a Time” series to ocean conservation nonprofits.
After three years of silence, Lu is preparing to launch an exciting new NFT work. Her upcoming series, which is part of OpenSea and Optimism’s “Get Based” campaign, will be a heartfelt exploration of human experience and emotion, and may pay homage to her iconic whale.
Ahead, we spoke with Lu about her creative process, the cultural influences that influence her art, and her upcoming work, “Get Based.”
Note: This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Photo: Colin Price for the Los Angeles Times, courtesy of Yiying Lu.
OpenSea: My first question is a bit more esoteric: growing up in a culture that uses characters as a written language, how has this influenced you as an artist? Each character symbolizes meaning, similar to emojis, do you feel you were destined to be an emoji artist?
Lu Yiying: This is a good question. I often think about the differences in language structures between the East and the West and how they affect our thinking. A few years ago, I read a great book called "The Geography of Mind", which analyzes how our thinking patterns are influenced by our mother tongue.
For example, English and other Romance languages are very structured, with grammar, nouns and verbs, and are therefore more linear. In contrast, Eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean are context-based. When children describe the same visual stimulus, an English-speaking child might say, "I see a big fish, a small fish, and a red fish," while a Chinese-speaking child would make up a story, such as, "The big fish follows the small fish to protect it."
In cultures that use Chinese characters, names also have deep meanings. My name means "happy and creative." Like a blessing from my grandfather, this meaning shapes your future. In art, collectors resonate with the message in a work for this reason, whether it's a digital or physical work. It's like talking to the artist or their family. The connection is very deep.
Linking this to NFTs, I think they are tokens that carry energy and symbolism, they travel through the digital world and are full of meaning, even though we now have AI to create art, human artists will always be needed, human life is all about storytelling, artists pass on the lineage and stories of their ancestors, this is our DNA, our experiences connect us to our ancestors, in a way, it’s like carrying traits passed down from generation to generation in NFTs.
OpenSea: That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing that background, can you tell us about the inspiration and ideas for your upcoming “Get Based”?
Lu Yiying: Of course! I just spent a week in New York celebrating the Shorty Award. It’s been 15 years since I won the inaugural Shorty Design Award for Fail Whale. That moment was so meaningful to me. It changed my life. I flew to the United States for the first time just to receive the award. It all started with a piece of art, but it was the huge art community that led me to win the Shorty Award 15 years ago. At first, I thought it was an award based on height, but it’s actually for creating short content!
However, during my recent visits, I realised that things have changed a lot, for example, there have been more mental health issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I wanted to create something that would bring joy and emotional connection to ourselves and our art audiences.
Good art is good medicine, I believe that colors and shapes can heal, and if a piece of art in a room, on a computer or on a phone can bring a relaxing feeling then that is what I want to create for people, however, I do love water and animals, especially whales, I love the concept of the “emotional ocean”, we are talking about the ocean but I want to go beyond that idea, the emotional ocean really resonates with me.
Finally, since my “Get Based” piece is coming out on June 25th, I wanted to have the release reflect the celebration of June, which is both National Ocean Month and Pride Month, and one of the final pieces will be “Make Waves” – maybe even an animation.
Yiying Lu, the first Shorty Awards design award winner in 2009, whose artwork inspired the organization’s brand identity that is still used today, incorporated Pantone’s Color of the Year Peach Fuzz into the new “Make Waves” artwork for the 2024 Shorty Awards tote bag. Photo courtesy of Yiying Lu.
OpenSea: That’s so beautiful, so you think artists play an important role in leading the conversation about mental health?
Lu Yiying: Yes, it’s an honor to be an artist, it’s an honor to post something online, why not make something that can really help others?
I turned to mental health because I believe it is one of the most important aspects of staying alive in society, and this was very evident during my visit to New York: I was traveling with a friend to Queens, riding the E train, and I was nearly pushed onto the subway tracks by a mentally ill person. New York was the first city I visited in the United States, so it has always felt like home.
However, the visit was heartbreaking, especially hearing more locals avoid the subway, which is so quintessentially New York, so I decided to incorporate this story into my Shorty talk, and I wanted to do something to bring back a sense of community and comfort.
"Invincible Summer Whale", Image source: OpenSea
OpenSea: Indeed! How do you think your artwork conveys these meaningful messages?
Lu Yiying: Art should promote something meaningful, and we joke that Generation Z is the youngest generation, using “morbid” to mean “great,” which makes me think about the words we use and how they manifest in reality.
Even though crypto art is just bits and codes, it affects the real world and our reality, everything around us, like the objects on the table or sofa, are transformations of consciousness.
OpenSea: Given that this year marks the 15th anniversary of your award for “Twitter Fail Whale,” have you thought about how your artwork today continues the conversation you started so long ago?
Lu Yiying: Yes, I still hope that my art can elevate and help emotions transcend their original form, just like the bird in the work lifts up the whale. This is what I had in mind when I conceived the concept of "Ocean of Emotions". Acknowledging emotions is important, but it is equally important to transform seemingly unpleasant things into something uplifting and inspiring.
I am interested in creating art that transports people into different emotional states, and this idea has been the inspiration for the original name of Fail Whale, it was originally called “Lifting the Dreamer”, we are all dreamers and immigrants experiencing emotions, and I wanted to champion this idea, especially in June, World Oceans Month, the whale symbolizes emotions and dreams, represents the immigrant experience and the vast wisdom of the ocean.
OpenSea: Great, thank you very much for sharing today and your time, we are looking forward to your upcoming new work!
Lu Yiying: Thank you, I really appreciate this conversation!
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