A smiley, also known as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram representing a smiling face. Since the 1950s, it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram or as a form of communication, such as emoticons. The smiley began as two dots and a line representing eyes and a mouth. More elaborate designs emerged in the 1950s, featuring noses, eyebrows, and outlines. New York radio station WMCA used a yellow and black design for its "Good Guys!" campaign in the early 1960s.* More yellow-and-black designs appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, including works by Harvey Ross Ball in 1963, and Franklin Loufrani in 1971.INPI Brand: FR1199660 ***Renewal*** of the Deposit Made on October 1, 1971 at the INPI No. 120.846 and Registered No. 832.277 The Smiley Company, founded by Franklin Loufrani, claims to hold the rights to a version of the smiley face in over 100 countries. It has become one of the top 100 licensing companies globally.
There was a widespread "smile face" fad in the United States in 1971.Latest National Fad: Smiling Faces Now Appear On Everything From Ear Screws To Blue Jeans (part 1) Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Lubbock, Texas. 3 September 1971. and (part 2) Retrieved 31 Jan 2024 A July 1971 Asbury Park Press report described the happy face as a nationwide craze, noting that retailers were stocking dozens of products from many different manufacturers, that no one held a trademark, and that the design’s origins were unclear, with some attributing it to earlier WMCA “Good Guys” sweatshirts.Everybody's Putting on a Happy Face, Asbury Park Press Asbury Park, New Jersey, Sun, Jul 25, 1971, Page 36 Retrieved 02-21-2024 The Associated Press (AP) ran a wirephoto showing Joy P. Young and Harvey Ball holding the design of the smiley and reported on September 11, 1971, that “two affiliated insurance companies” credited Harvey Ball with designing the symbol in 1963, while Bernard and Murray Spain claimed credit for introducing it to the market. This referred to the Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company of America and the Guarantee Mutual Assurance Company of America, whose 1963 "Smile Power" campaign first distributed smiley buttons to employees. In October 1971, Loufrani trademarked his design in France while working as a journalist for the French newspaper France-Soir. Today, the smiley face has evolved from an ideogram into a template for communication and use in written language. The internet smiley originated with Scott Fahlman in the 1980s, when he first theorized that ASCII characters could be used to create faces and convey emotions in text. Since then, Fahlman's designs have become digital pictograms known as emoticons. They are loosely based on the ideograms designed in the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the yellow and black design.
Etymology The word smiley likely originated as a surname in Lanarkshire, Scotland. During this historical period, surnames evolved from medieval nicknames, with "smiley" describing a person with a cheerful nature. The earliest recorded Smiley surname is Thomas Smiley. Born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1660 as a Williamite military figure,The Scots in Ulster Surname Map by Dr. William Roulston, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2008 he likely descended from 17th-century Scottish migrants from Lanarkshire who settled during the Plantation of Ulster.
The use of smiley as a noun or noun modifier came much later than the surname, but likely came from the creative or colloquial shortening of smiling to mimic spoken dialect. In 1957, author Jane McHenry used it as a noun in Family Weekly magazine when he wrote, "Draw a big smiley face on the plate!"Do-It-Yourself Carnival by Jane McHenry Vicksburg Evening Post Vicksburg, Mississippi • Sun, Sep 8, 1957, Page 38--Part of the syndicated Junior TREASURE Chest Edited by Marjorie Barrows Editor of The Children' Hour A year later, there was an illustration of a noseless smiling face containing two dots, eyebrows, and a single curved line for a mouth in a write-up in Family Weekly, Galloping Ghosts! by Bill Ross.Galloping Ghosts! By Bill Ross The Tyler Courier-Times Tyler, Texas • Sun, Oct 26, 1958 Page 64--Part of the syndicated Junior TREASURE Chest Edited by Marjorie Barrows Editor of The Children' Hour
The term "Smiley" was used by Franklin Loufrani in France when he registered his design for trademark protection while working as a journalist for France-Soir in 1971. The smiley accompanied positive news in the newspaper and eventually became the foundation for The Smiley Company.
History of smiling faces
Early history The oldest known smiling face was found by a team of archaeologists led by Nicolò Marchetti of the University of Bologna. Marchetti and his team pieced together fragments of a Hittite pot, dating back to approximately 1700 BC, found in Karkamış, Turkey. Once the pot had been pieced together, the team noticed that the item had a large smiling face engraved on it, becoming the earliest artifact with such a design to be found.
Early to mid 20th century The score of Erwin Schulhoff's "" (the middle movement of his "", published in 1919) includes smiling and sad faces.
In the 1930s, American corporations began to experiment with smiling faces in advertising. One such company was Chevrolet, who at the time had a heated rivalry with Ford and launched the 1931 campaign "Keep Your Eye on Chevrolet". They used pinback buttons as part of this campaign, which featured a yellow happy face character, which looks remarkably similar to modern day emoticons as it isn't smiling but is winking and has expression on its face.
In the 1930s, an eccentric Depression-era tramp was popularly dubbed "Santa Claus Smith". He identified himself as John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe. He wandered across the United States, giving hand-scrawled checks for extravagant sums to people who showed him small kindnesses, such as meals, coffee, or lifts. His checks were written in indelible pencil on scraps of brown wrapping paper. They typically featured a crude smiling-face doodle—two dots for eyes, a dot for a nose, and a curved line for a mouth. His idiosyncratic handwriting often included the misspelling of "thousand" Contemporary documentation of his checks and the doodled smile can be found in bank correspondence reviewed for Joseph Mitchell’s 1940 profile. Later historical accounts have highlighted the episode as an early cultural appearance of a smile motif in the United States.
Ingmar Bergman's 1948 film Port of Call features a scene where the unhappy Berit (played by Nine-Christine Jönsson) draws a sad face – closely resembling the modern "frowny" face but with a dot for the nose – in lipstick on her mirror before being interrupted. In September 1963, there was the premiere of The Funny Company, an American children's TV program, which had a noseless Smiling face used as a kids' club logo; the closing credits ended with the message, "Keep Smiling!" The Funny Company, Inc. US Trademark Registration Certificate No. 764,727, Feb 11, 1964, Ser. No. 164,341, file Mar. 11, 1963 First Use Jan 10, 1963, First Use in Commerce Feb. 13, 1963 access date March 27, 2022
In the latter half of the 20th century, the face now known as a smiley evolved into a well-known symbol recognizable for its yellow and black features. The first known combination of yellow and black was used for a smiling face in late 1962, when New York City radio station WMCA released a yellow sweatshirt as part of a marketing campaign.I heart design : significant graphic design selected by designers, illustrators, and critics By 1963, over 11,000 sweatshirts had been given away. They had featured in Billboard magazine, and numerous celebrities had also been pictured wearing them, including the actress Patsy King and the singer Mick Jagger. The radio station used the happy face as part of a competition for listeners. When the station called listeners, any listener who answered their phone with "WMCA Good Guys!" was rewarded with a "WMCA Good Guys!" sweatshirt that incorporated the yellow and black happy face into its design. The features of the WMCA smiley were a yellow face, with black dots as eyes, and a slightly crooked smile. The outline of the face was also not smooth, giving it a more hand-drawn look. Originally, the yellow and black sweatshirt (sometimes referred to as gold), had WMCA Good Guys! written on the front with no smiley face.
Harvey Ball design
A number of United States–based designs of yellow and black happy faces emerged over the next decade.Button Helps Firms Gain 'Smile' Image, "Small Business World 1966-09:Vol 3 Iss 9 page 1. State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, wanted to raise the morale of its staff following a merger with another insurance company.A Grin That's Lasted 43 Years - Smiley Face Got Its Start In Worcester (part 1) and Smiley Grew With America’s Search For Positives(part 2) Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, Fri, Sep 29, 2006, Pages D01, D05 Company Vice President John Adam, Jr., suggested a "friendship campaign". He assigned Joy Young, Assistant Director of Sales and Marketing, to lead the project. According to Worcester Historical Museum's documents, Young requested that Harvey Ball, a freelance artist, design "a little smile to be used on buttons, desk cards and posters". archive Ball completed the happy face in ten minutes and was paid $45 (). His rendition, with a bright yellow background, dark oval eyes, a full smile, and creases at the sides of the mouth, became familiar worldwide as the most iconic version of the smiley. In response to queries why he had not trademarked the button design, Adam said: "We never intended to keep the smile to ourselves—we want everyone to smile and to keep smiling and to remind them that that is our first goal in serving our customers—keep 'em smiling!"
In 1967, Seattle graphic artist George Tanagi drew his own version at the request of advertising agent David Stern. Tanagi's design was used in a Seattle-based University Federal Savings & Loan advertising campaign. Stern, who ran for mayor in Seattle in 1993, took credit for inventing the smiley face, saying he was inspired by the song "Put on a Happy Face" in Bye Bye Birdie.
The Philadelphia-based brothers Bernard and Murray Spain, after coming across the design in a button shop, appropriated it for novelty items for their business, Traffic Stoppers. They added the slogan "Have a happy day" (or "Have a nice day") and copyrighted this version.Catalog of Copyright Entries 3D Ser Vol 25 Pts 7-11A by Library of Congress. Copyright Office. 1971 Though they believed that they could have gone to court to prevent other businesses from copying the smile alone, they said they would only do so if these businesses were "degrading the smile". They sold other manufacturers’ smile products alongside their own, reasoning that these "just enhance our own products". The Spain brothers expanded their business rapidly, producing over 50 million buttons with New York button manufacturer NG Slater.Peter Shapiro, "Smiling Faces Sometimes", in The Wire, issue 203, January 2001, pp. 44–49.The smile button: It's Enough to Man Cry(part 1) By Joseph M Treen Newsday (Suffolk Edition), Melville, New York, Mon, Mar 20, 1972 page 3 A and (part 2 page 12 A)
The Smiley Company