This morning, the designer behind the brand new 🫓 ‘flatbread emoji’ (arepas), Lumen Bigott and I connected over Twitter, after hearing each other’s emoji design story from “The Power of Food Emoji” by Emily Thomas on BBC Food Chain, which was released yesterday.
Lumen is originally from Venezuela and now works at Airbnb San Francisco as a designer. Last night, I listened to this heart-warming story of how she and Sebastian Delmont found each other via Twitter and co-authored the 🫓 arepas emoji last year. They are both Venezuelans who live in different parts of the US. Even though they have never met each other in person, yet the quest of 🫓 arepas emoji brought them together. Their story on 🫓 arepas emoji was the first part of the podcast, and my 🥟🥡🥠🥢 🧋 emojis was the second part. Even though the same journalist interviewed three of us, we did our recording separately, so listening to their arepas emoji adventure was the first time I learn about their life stories.
Their story resonated with me a lot and notably when she says:
“When you leave a country, it is super hard. Anything that you do to give back (to people from that country/culture), it’s incredible. It makes a huge difference.”
When I heard this, I started to tear up: I was born and raised in Shanghai, China. I left my entire family in China for school in Sydney, Australia, in 2002. In 2007, one of my art pieces “Lifting a Dreamer,” got used by Twitter as its service overcapacity page image between 2008 and 2013.
Little did I know, this illustration would be seen by millions of people and inspired thousands of creative works from sculptures and cupcakes, beer label contests and fine art, to LEGO versions and real tattoos… the internet affectionately called it the Twitter “Fail Whale”.
It might be one of the earliest technology error pages integrated with art which was appreciated by its users. WIRED Magazine even called it “a pop culture icon for the Web 2.0 crowd”. Since then, many tech companies have started to have their own “Fail Whale Page” artworks, to delight the users and humanize the tech and compensate for the technical difficulties.
In late 2008, hundreds of internet users voted for me on Twitter, which made me a winner of the first Shorty Awards in Design. This recognition physically lured me into the United States for the first time in my life in February 2009.
On my way back to Sydney from New York, I decided to stop by in the San Francisco Bay Area for three days, to meet up with some of the very people who voted for me in person. Before that, I didn’t even know where Silicon Valley was located. During my short visit, I made many friends; many of whom were startup founders, who later became my clients for branding and design.
Since then, I was enamored by the optimistic and innovative spirit in the Bay Area. While working with many startups in Sydney remotely, I have heard the calling to move to San Francisco and the Bay Area physically, to bridge the gap between Art and Technology in person.
But I have tried to resist that calling many times, not only because I had to give up my friends, colleagues, and network — these were relationships I spent more than a decade on building in Sydney. I also had to leave my parents, who don’t speak much English back then. They had moved all the way from China to Australia to be with me, as I was their only child. Moving to San Francisco and leaving my parents and friends in Sydney, and my grandma and relatives in Shanghai, was possibly one of the hardest decisions I had made in my life.
I am forever grateful that my family gave me the blessing to follow my calling and take a leap of faith to move to San Francisco in 2015. It has been an incredible journey for me in the past 5 years: from being the creative director at 500 Startups, using art and design helping hundreds of startups raise millions; speaking about Cross-Cultural Design at Adobe MAX and SXSW for thousands of global audiences; to creating 🥟🥡🥠🥢 🧋 food emojis now used by billions of people.
I am grateful for having these experiences and serving the global community with all the work I do. Still, fear and doubts would creep in, from time to time, especially towards Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday season. I don’t know when I would be able to with my family again, especially my 90-year-old grandma. At the same time, I had to stay sane and work on my mission alone in San Francisco during a global pandemic, missing my family every day from thousands of miles away. Sometimes, part of me would question whether I am on the right path, whether I will be ok, whether all the sacrifice is worth it.
Yet, a magical moment like this morning made me feel hopeful and assured: Right after Lumen befriended me on Twitter and wrote to me: OMG we were meant to be connected!
I then realized we had already connected 12 years ago, and neither of us knew this until today!
Two years ago, I tweeted a GIF animation to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Twitter Fail Whale. Since it has inspired hundreds, probably thousands, of funny, creative and amusing homages and take-offs from users globally, that GIF includes 25 of my favorite global fan art pieces, with each author’s name and country, from Japan 🇯🇵 to Australia 🇦🇺; Denmark 🇩🇰 to Brazil 🇧🇷, Singapore 🇸🇬 to United States 🇺🇸. One of them is: Lumen Bigott from Venezuela 🇻🇪 !
It is moments like this that make it all worthwhile. I realized that we are never really alone:
We are here to remember and re-member: when we remember our core purpose, we will re-member and re-connect with our like-minded kindred spirits — — that, is when, we are home.
For all you dreamers and doers:
Home is where the flatbread 🫓 is.
Home is where the dumpling 🥟 is.
Home is where your heart ❤️ is.
Listen to our Story “The Power of Food Emoji” on BBC Food Chain:
- The Story of the ‘flatbread emoji’ 🫓 starts at 0:16
- The Story of the 🥟🥡🥠🥢 and 🧋 emojis starts at 14:33
