'Fail Whale' artist stars in first North American exhibition (photos)

SAN FRANCISCO--Yiying Lu may never create anything more famous than the "Fail Whale," the iconic image she designed and that Twitter has for years used to signify that it is down. But now, she is a co-founder of a start-up called Walls360 that hopes to revolutionize the wall graphics market.

The basis of Walls360's business is what co-founder John Doffing calls "premium, self-adhesive, repositionable, fabric paper," which can be placed anywhere without harming the surface it's put on and can be moved around up to 100 times.

Walls360 went live to the public on Wednesday, and to celebrate, the company is hosting a launch party here Thursday night. The party is doubling as Lu's first-ever North American exhibition.

Here, Lu poses during set-up for the exhibition with "Mobile Elephant," a design that mixes the elephant and birds image that inspired the Fail Whale with a depiction of a mobile phone.

Lu is a big fan of mixing imagery of animals and technology.

The "Fail Whale," the image that helped bring Lu to geek fame.

To help launch comedian Conan O'Brien's new talk show, Lu was commissioned to create the "Pale Whale," which shows O'Brien riding the famous Fail Whale.

This is "Cog Lion," another design that mixes animals with imagery of technology.

One of the things that Walls360 hopes to sell a lot of is tangrams, which are seven-piece designs that can be re-arranged in an infinite number of orientations. This is a tangram fashioned to look like a cat.

This is "Clicking Fox."

Here, we see Lu holding up one of the custom Foursquare check-in badges that she designed for the exhibition and launch party.

This is a Walls360 sheet that features both Lu's double-rainbow design and some of her whimsical animals.

This is a design announcing the Thursday launch party.

This is "Fishy Kitty."

This is "Kissing penguins," or "Win Penguins," which Lu designed for the wedding invitation of Dale Larson and Laura La Gassa. Larson said all he asked was that he and La Gassa be able to be the first ones to use the design. Now, Walls360 is selling it.

Walls360 is selling packs of these flowers, which can be repositioned in an infinite number of ways.

This is a giraffe design of Lu's.

This is "Graphic mice."

After tech icon Guy Kawasaki saw Conan O'Brien's "Pale Whale," he wanted his own personal design. So Lu said she created this play on the "Fail Whale," which depicts Kawasaki riding a hoisted butterfly.

Lu designed a special version of the Laughing Squid logo for Laughing Squid's 15th anniversary.

Here, we see Lu placing parts of a tangram on the wall for the exhibition.

Here, Lu poses for a photograph with a sheet of tangrams.

Here, Lu s mounting a "Whacking mole" graphic.

This is a meta-poster showing Lu holding a "Whacking Mole" sheet.

As the Walls360 team mounted Lu's designs for the exhibition, they didn't have to worry that the sheets would get wrinkled. The material Walls360 is using doesn't wrinkle very easily.

This Lu design features a porcupine watering some flowers.

This is "Space bunny."

As the artist, Lu isn't afraid to play with her own work. Here, we see "Mobile Elephant" mounted upside down.

This design explains a little bit about what Walls360 does.