What is this?
This is what happens when you make silly bets with your best friend.
No, really... What is this?
It's a project that started out as an idea when I was backpacking through South America in 2009. I love to travel and meet new people, but the problem with meeting new people when I'm out travelling is that there too many new faces and I easily forget them. And that really is a shame. So I got the idea that I would ask everyone I met to draw a giraffe for me, thinking it would be easier to remember them that way. You can read why I chose giraffes further down on this page. I fell in love with this new idea of mine and was very excited to start collecting giraffes from my new friends. But as it turned out, I forgot to ask most people and the whole thing just fell apart. My memory wasn't good enough to keep the project going.
Even though I gave up this giraffe collecting project I never really let the idea go. And when I was out drinking with my good friend Jørgen on the 6th of June in 2009 I said a sentence that changed my life. We were discussing the internet and how amazing it is, when I said: "There really are no limits anymore. Anything is possible! I could easily collect one million giraffes if I wanted to." I wasn't really thinking about what I was saying and Jørgen wouldn't let that sentence go. He refused to believe it was possible to collect that many giraffes, so we made a bet. The wager is, as it always is with our silly bets, a case of beer.
We set a few rules: The giraffes must be hand made and not on a computer. Otherwise it would be too easy. The deadline was set to the 1st of January 2011, giving me a total of 573 days to get this done. A few days went by before I got around to thinking about how I was gonna do this. I figured I needed a website, so I made www.onemilliongiraffes.com and on Thursday the 11th of June 2009 I posted that link on my Facebook and Twitter accounts as an inside joke among my friends. I did this before lunch and hoped that I would get 20, maybe even 30, giraffes within a week. Then we would all laugh and forget about the whole thing. Well, it didn't really turn out that way. When I got back from lunch I had 46 giraffes in my inbox. Several of them from people I didn't know. I was baffled and confused. So I went online and saw that my friends had spread the link to all of their friends. And they had again spread it to their friends. The website spread like wildfire. By the end of that first day I had 134 giraffes and my life hasn't been the same ever since.
The project has since evolved to something greater than that silly little bet with Jørgen... It has become a way to spread joy and laughter! It really is a lot of fun to sit back and watch all the giraffes coming in from all over the world! I cannot believe the response I've gotten and the fact that the whole world is creating giraffes for me is mind-blowing. This whole experience is a daily exercise in being grateful and humble.
Even though I gave up this giraffe collecting project I never really let the idea go. And when I was out drinking with my good friend Jørgen on the 6th of June in 2009 I said a sentence that changed my life. We were discussing the internet and how amazing it is, when I said: "There really are no limits anymore. Anything is possible! I could easily collect one million giraffes if I wanted to." I wasn't really thinking about what I was saying and Jørgen wouldn't let that sentence go. He refused to believe it was possible to collect that many giraffes, so we made a bet. The wager is, as it always is with our silly bets, a case of beer.
We set a few rules: The giraffes must be hand made and not on a computer. Otherwise it would be too easy. The deadline was set to the 1st of January 2011, giving me a total of 573 days to get this done. A few days went by before I got around to thinking about how I was gonna do this. I figured I needed a website, so I made www.onemilliongiraffes.com and on Thursday the 11th of June 2009 I posted that link on my Facebook and Twitter accounts as an inside joke among my friends. I did this before lunch and hoped that I would get 20, maybe even 30, giraffes within a week. Then we would all laugh and forget about the whole thing. Well, it didn't really turn out that way. When I got back from lunch I had 46 giraffes in my inbox. Several of them from people I didn't know. I was baffled and confused. So I went online and saw that my friends had spread the link to all of their friends. And they had again spread it to their friends. The website spread like wildfire. By the end of that first day I had 134 giraffes and my life hasn't been the same ever since.
The project has since evolved to something greater than that silly little bet with Jørgen... It has become a way to spread joy and laughter! It really is a lot of fun to sit back and watch all the giraffes coming in from all over the world! I cannot believe the response I've gotten and the fact that the whole world is creating giraffes for me is mind-blowing. This whole experience is a daily exercise in being grateful and humble.
I love it.
Why giraffes?
My experience is that every giraffe drawing is different and people seem to laugh and smile when they draw them. They are by far my favourite animal and I've always been fascinated by them. They are very unique and special. The long neck and yellow/black coloring makes them so distinct from every other animal on Earth that everyone knows how a giraffe looks like. There's not a person in the whole world that can't draw a giraffe. And they look so weird, yet so majestic. Have you ever seen a giraffe drinking? It looks hilarious! How can you not love an animal that has his feet on the ground and his head among the stars?
What happens if you make it?
I really don't know. I can't think about that just yet. I need that million first. But a book and an art exhibit would be cool. I might even donate all the content to a charity if they can use it for something good. But first: One million giraffes!
Who are you?
My name is Ola Helland. I'm a 25-year-old guy from Stavanger in Norway.
I made this website myself and I run the project alone. I look like this:
I made this website myself and I run the project alone. I look like this:
Who is Jørgen?
Jørgen wants to be anonymous (but his name really is Jørgen) and I'm gonna respect that since he is a very good friend of mine. We have a long history of stupid bets. The biggest highlight before this one was when we were in Japan and I bet that Jørgen couldn't run faster than the worlds longest gondola ride. We were going to the Fuji Rock Festival and the "Doragondola" is on the festival site up in the Japanese mountains. All we knew about it when we made the bet was that it's the worlds longest with it's 5.4 kilometers stretch (almost 3.5 miles). We did some (sloppy) math and calculated a certain time Jørgen would need to run the same distance. Unfortunantly for me, we didn't do a good job with the math and it turned out that Jørgen could walk the five kilometers in the time he was given. So I lost that bet, but seeing him buy a jogging outfit and all the inhuman amounts of sweat he produced in the extremely sunny Kyoto weather (39° Celsius / 102.2° Fahrenheit) while "running" the five kilometers at Nishikyogoku Athletic Stadium was worth it!
