Smiley Face
Every yellow emoji face can trace its family tree back to the original smiley. So, what is the origin of this widely recognised ideogram, representing happiness and positivity?
The smiley face, also known simply as the smiley, is a widely recognised ideogram that represents happiness and positivity. It became a symbol of the counterculture movement during the 1970s, representing the spirit of peace, love and happiness that was central to that era, and was often associated with hippies.
So, where did it all begin?
A yellow and black smiley was used by New York radio station WMCA for its “Good Guys” marketing campaign in 1962, and within a year over 11,000 yellow campaign sweatshirts they produced had been given away – including one, it would seem, to Mick Jagger.
Then in 1963, graphic designer Harvey Ross Ball was commissioned by the State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, to create a cheerful and eye-catching symbol to boost employee morale. [Ed: Harvey looks like he could use some life insurance.] He created the design in ten minutes and was paid US$45 (equivalent to US$472 in 2025). His rendition, with a bright yellow background, dark oval eyes, full smile, and creases at the sides of the mouth, was imprinted onto thousands of buttons.
However, it wasn’t until 1970 that the symbol truly gained worldwide recognition. That’s when two brothers, Bernard and Murray Spain, took Ball’s design, which had not been legally protected by either Ball or his client, added the words “Have A Nice Day”, and began churning out merchandise on an industrial scale. In doing so, the Spain brothers created one of the biggest fads of the decade, selling an estimated 50 million badges and enshrining the smiley face as an icon of mainstream popular culture.
But, the plot thickens. In 1972, a French journalist called Franklin Loufrani became the first person to actually register the mark for commercial use. He first started using the logo to highlight good news stories in the newspaper France Soir. He then trademarked the smile, dubbed simply “smiley” in over 100 countries and launched the Smiley Company. Loufrani’s son Nicolas took over the family business and today the Smiley Company makes more than $130 million a year and is one of the world’s top 100 licensing companies. The Yanks out-Yanked?
The smiley has also developed a ubiquitous presence online in the form of the emojis that pepper our collective digital communications. So smiley has become a broader term that often includes both the ideogram design, and also the facial emojis that tend also to be yellow.
The colour yellow for smiley is no accident. Studies have shown that yellow evokes feelings of happiness. Yellow is especially evocative of the sun and all the positive emotions which come with it.
Unicode, the information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems, has set a standard for skin tone as represented in emojis. By default an emoji depicting people should use a generic non-realistic skin tone, but as an example it suggests a shade of yellow (#FFCC22) that is commonly used in smiley faces. While not explicitly stated we can assume that this references the yellow smiley face first created by Ball.
Story Idea: David Art Wales
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