Smiley

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For other uses of "Smiley", see Smiley (disambiguation).
"Smiley face" redirects here. For other uses, see Smiley Face (disambiguation).

Smiley

First appearance 1948, 1963

A smiley (sometimes simply called a happy face or smiling face) is a stylized representation of
a smiling humanoid face, an important part of popular culture. The classic form designed in 1963
comprises a yellow circle with two black dots representing eyes and a black arc representing the
mouth ( ). On the Internet and in other plain text communication channels, the emoticon form
(sometimes also called the smiley-face emoticon) has traditionally been most popular, typically
employing a colon and a right parenthesis to form sequences like :^) , :) , or (: that resemble
a smiling face when viewed after rotation through 90 degrees. "Smiley" is also sometimes used
as a generic term for any emoticon. The smiley has been referenced in nearly all areas of
Western culture including music, movies, and art. The smiley has also been associated with late
1980s and early 1990s rave culture.[1][2][3]
The plural form "smilies" is commonly used,[4] but the variant spelling "smilie" is not as common as
the "y" spelling.[5]

Contents
[hide]

1History
2In text
3Licensing and legal issues
o 3.1United States
4See also
5References
6External links

History[edit]
A poster for Lili in 1953

The poet and author Johannes V. Jensen was amongst other things famous for experimenting
with the form of his writing. In a letter sent to publisher Ernst Bojesen in December 1900 he
includes both a happy face and a sad face, resembling the modern smiley.

Signature of Bernard Hennet, Abbot of r nad Szavou Cistercian cloister, in 1741, with smiley-like
drawing

A commercial version of a smiley face with the word "THANKS" above it was available in 1919
and applied as a sticker on receipts issued by the Buffalo Steam Roller Company in Buffalo New
York. The round face was much more detailed than the one depicted above, having eyebrows,
nose, teeth, chin, facial creases and shading, and is reminiscent of "man-in-the-moon" style
characterizations.
Ingmar Bergman's 1948 film Port of Call includes a scene where the unhappy Berit draws
a sad face closely resembling the modern "frowny", but including a dot for the nose in lipstick
on her mirror, before being interrupted.[6] In 1953 and 1958, similar happy faces were used in
promotional campaigns for the films Lili and Gigi.

The WMCA 1962 sweatshirt

The smiley was first introduced to popular culture as part of a promotion by New York radio
station WMCAbeginning in 1962. Listeners who answered their phone "WMCA Good Guys!" were
rewarded with a "WMCA good guys" sweatshirt that incorporated a happy face into its design.
Thousands of these sweatshirts were given away.[7][8][9] The WMCA smiley was yellow with black
dots as eyes, but it had a slightly crooked smile instead of a full smile, and no creases in the
mouth.[9]
As per Smithsonian, the smiley face as we know it today was created by Harvey Ross Ball,
an American graphic artist.[10] In 1963, Harvey Ball was employed by State Mutual Life Assurance
Company of Worcester, Massachusetts (now known as Hanover Insurance) to create a happy
face to raise the morale of the employees. Ball created the design in ten minutes and was paid
$45 (equivalent to US$330 in 2012 currency). His rendition, with bright yellow background, dark
oval eyes, full smile and creases at the sides of the mouth,[9] was imprinted on more than fifty
million buttons and was familiar around the world. The design is so simple that it is certain that
similar versions were produced before 1963, including those cited above. However, Balls
rendition, as described here, has become the most iconic version.[8][11] In 1967, Seattle graphic
artist George Tenagi drew his own version at the request of advertising agent, David Stern.
Tenagi's design was used in an advertising campaign for Seattle-based University Federal
Savings & Loan. The ad campaign was inspired by Charles Strouse' lyrics in "Put on a Happy
Face" from the musical Bye Bye Birdie. Stern, the man behind this campaign, incorporated the
Happy Face in his run for Seattle mayor in 1993.[11]

Beat Dis by Bomb the Bass (1988) features the "bloodied" version of the popular smiley icon.

The graphic was further popularized in the early 1970s by Philadelphia brothers Bernard and
Murray Spain, who seized upon it in September 1970 in a campaign to sell novelty items. The two
produced buttons as well as coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers and many other items
emblazoned with the symbol and the phrase "Have a happy day" (devised by Gyula
Bogar),[12] which mutated into "Have a nice day". Working with New York button manufacturer NG
Slater, some 50 million happy face badges were produced by 1972.[13]
In 1972, Frenchman Franklin Loufrani became the first person to legally trademark the smiley
face. He used it to highlight the good news parts of the newspaper France Soir. He simply called
the design "Smiley" and launched the Smiley Company. In 1996 Loufrani's son Nicolas Loufrani
took over the family business and transformed it into a huge multinational corporation. Nicolas
was outwardly skeptical of Harvey Ball's claim to creating the first smiley face. After all, the
design that his father came up with and Ball's design were nearly identical. Loufrani argued that
the design is so simple that no one person can lay claim to having created it. As evidence for this,
Loufrani's website points to early cave paintings found in France (2500 BC) that he claims are the
first depictions of a smiley face. Loufrani also points to a 1960 radio ad campaign that reportedly
made use of a similar design.[14]
In the UK, the happy face has been associated with psychedelic culture since Ubi Dwyer and
the Windsor Free Festival in the 1970s and the electronic dance music culture, particularly
with acid house, that emerged during the Second Summer of Love in the late 1980s. The
association was cemented when the band Bomb the Bass used an extracted smiley
from Watchmen on the centre of its Beat Dis hit single.

In text[edit]
Main article: Emoticon
The earliest known smiley-like image in a written document was drawn by a Slovak notary to
indicate his satisfaction with the state of his town's municipal financial records in 1635.[15] A
disputed early use of the smiley in a printed text may have been in Robert Herrick's poem To
Fortune (1648),[16] which contains the line "Upon my ruines (smiling yet :)". Journalist Levi Stahl
has suggested that this may have been an intentional "orthographic joke", while this occurrence is
likely merely the colon placed inside parentheses rather than outside of them as is standard
typographic practice today -- (smiling yet): . There are citations of similar punctuation in a non-
humorous context, even within Herrick's own work.[17] It is likely that the parenthesis was added
later by modern editors.[18]
On the Internet, the smiley has become a visual means of conveyance that uses images. The first
known mention on the Internet was on September 19, 1982, when Scott Fahlmanfrom Carnegie
Mellon University wrote:

I propose that [sic] the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) . Read it
sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes,
given current trends. For this, use: :-(.[19][20]
In Software, yellow graphical smileys have been used for many different purposes, including
games.[21] One of the earliest uses of smileys in chat systems was in Yahoo! Messengerfrom
1998, where it can be seen in the user list next to each user, and it was also used as an icon for
the application. In 2001, SmileyWorld launched the website "The official Smiley dictionary",[22] with
smileys proposed to replace ASCII emoticons (i.e. emojis). In November 2001, and later, smiley
emojis inside the actual chat text was adopted by several chat systems, including Yahoo
Messenger.
The smiley is the printable version of characters 1 and 2 of (black-and-white versions
of) codepage 437 (1981) of the first IBM PC and all subsequent PC compatible computers. For
modern computers, all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 95[23] can use the smiley as
part of Windows Glyph List 4, although some computer fonts miss some characters, and some
characters cannot be reproduced by programs not compatible with Unicode.[24] It also appears in
Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane.[25]
Unicode smiley characters:

U+263A Alt + 1 White Smiling Face

U+263B Alt + 2 Black Smiling Face

Unicode also contains the "sad" face:

U+2639 White Frowning Face

Licensing and legal issues[edit]

Authentic Worcester-made smiley face, by Harvey Ball

The rights to the Smiley trademark in one hundred countries are owned by the Smiley
Company.[26] Its subsidiary SmileyWorld Ltd, in London, headed by Nicolas Loufrani, creates or
approves all the Smiley products sold in countries where it holds the trademark.[citation needed]The
Smiley brand and logo have significant exposure through licensees in sectors such as clothing,
home decoration, perfumery, plush, stationery, publishing, and through promotional
campaigns.[27] The Smiley Company is one of the 100 biggest licensing companies in the world,
with a turnover of US$167 million in 2012.[28] The first Smiley shop opened in London in
the Boxpark shopping centre in December 2011.[29]
United States[edit]
In 1997, Franklin Loufrani and Smiley World attempted to acquire trademark rights to the symbol
(and even to the word "smiley" itself) in the United States. This brought Loufrani into conflict
with Wal-Mart, which had begun prominently featuring a happy face in its "Rolling Back Prices"
campaign over a year earlier. Wal-Mart responded first by trying to block Loufrani's application,
then later by trying to register the smiley face itself; Loufrani in turn sued to stop Wal-Mart's
application, and in 2002 after the issue went to court,[30] where it would languish for seven years
before a decision.
Wal-Mart began phasing out the smiley face on its vests[31] and its website[32] in 2006. Despite that,
Wal-Mart sued an online parodist for alleged "trademark infringement" after he used the symbol
(as well as various portmanteaus of "Wal-", such as "Walocaust"). The District Court found in
favor of the parodist when in March 2008, the judge concluded that Wal-Mart's smiley face logo
was not shown to be "inherently distinctive" and that it "has failed to establish that the smiley face
has acquired secondary meaning or that it is otherwise a protectible trademark" under U.S. law.[33]
In June 2010, Wal-Mart and the Smiley Company founded by Loufrani settled their 10-year-old
dispute in front of the Chicago federal court. The terms remain confidential.[34] In 2016, Wal-Mart
brought back the smiley face on its website, social media profiles, and in selected stores.[35]

See also[edit]
Acid2
Emoji
Emoticon
Galle (Martian crater)
Kolobok
Mr. Yuk
Pac-Man (character)
Red John

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Jon Savage (February 21, 2009). "Smiley Face Design
History". Retrieved October 5,2016.
2. Jump up^ Michaelangelo Matos (December 21, 2016). "A Brief
History of the Smiley Face, Rave Culture's Most Ubiquitous
Symbol". Retrieved May 1, 2017.
3. Jump up^ Lim, Brian (July 23, 2015). "The Evolution of Rave
Fashion". Retrieved May 1, 2017.
4. Jump up^ Google Ngram Viewer: smilies vs smileys
5. Jump up^ Google Ngram Viewer: smilie vs smiley
6. Jump up^ Ingmarbergman.se. A still from the scene.
7. Jump up^ Alastair Sooke (February 3, 2012), "Smiley's People
(Radio 4): The million dollar smile", The Telegraph, [Loufrani]
points out that a smiley face was a key feature of a well-known
promotional campaign for a radio network on Americas East Coast
in the late Fifties.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b Honan, William H. (April 14, 2001). "H. R. Ball, 79,
Ad Executive Credited With happy Face". The New York Times.
Retrieved August 29, 2009.
9. ^ Jump up to:a b c Doug Lennox, illustrated by Catriona Wight
(2004), Now You Know More: The Book of Answers, Now You
Know, 2 (illustrated ed.), Dundurn, p. 50, ISBN 9781550025309
10. Jump up^ Stamp, Jimmy (13 March 2013). Who really invented
the Smiley face. Washington DC: Smithsonian. Retrieved 29
May 2015.
11. ^ Jump up to:a b Adams, Cecil (23 April 1993). "Who invented the
smiley face?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved 18 April 2011.
12. Jump up^ "web - Lame Adventures". lameadventures.com.
13. Jump up^ Peter Shapiro, "Smiling Faces Sometimes", in The
Wire, issue 203, January 2001, pp. 4449.
14. Jump up^ Jimmy Stamp. "Who Really Invented the Smiley
Face?". Smithsonian.
15. Jump up^ Votruba, Martin. "17th-century Emoji". Slovak Studies
Program. University of Pittsburgh.
16. Jump up^ Madrigal, Alexis C. (14 April 2014). "The First Emoticon
May Have Appeared in ... 1648". The Atlantic. Retrieved 15
April 2014.
17. Jump up^ "Emoticon: Robert Herrick's 17th century poem "To
Fortune" does not contain a smiley face.". Slate Magazine.
18. Jump up^ "smileys, emoticons, typewriter art". Text Patterns - The
New Atlantis.
19. Jump up^ Fahlman's original message Retrieved October 27,
2013.
20. Jump up^ "Smiley Lore :-)". cmu.edu.
21. Jump up^ screenshot of smiley use on Atari 2600
22. Jump up^ The smiley dictionary, as it looked in march 2001
23. Jump up^ "WGL Assistant v1.1: The Multilingual Font Manager".
Archived from the original on 24 March 2008.
24. Jump up^ Announcing WGL Assistant. Announcement: WGL
Assistant V1.1 Beta available, comp.fonts, 27 July 1999, Microsoft
Typography News archive.
25. Jump up^ wikibooks:Unicode/Character reference/2000-2FFF
26. Jump up^ Crampton, Thomas (5 July 2006). "Smiley Face Is
Serious to Company". The New York Times.
27. Jump up^ "Smiley Licensing | Company Profile by". Licensing.biz.
Archived from the original on February 29, 2012. Retrieved 2013-
03-14.
28. Jump
up^http://www.rankingthebrands.com/PDF/Top%20125%20Global
%20Licensors%202011,%20License%20Global.pdf
29. Jump up^ Giedrius Ivanauskas (2012-01-16). "Boxpark
Shoreditch: Interview with Nicolas Loufrani CEO of Smiley | Made
in Shoreditch - A Magazine About Style, Innovation, Dining,
Nightlife and People in Shoreditch". Made in Shoreditch.
Retrieved 2013-03-14.
30. Jump up^ "Wal-Mart seeks smiley face rights". BBC News. 8 May
2006. Retrieved 2006-05-09.
31. Jump up^ Kabel, Mark (October 22, 2006). "Wal-Mart phasing out
smiley face vests". Associated Press.
32. Jump up^ Williamson, Richard (October 30, 2006). "The last days
of Wal-Mart's smiley face". Adweek.
33. Jump up^ "Smith v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.". Citizen Vox. 28 March
2008. The relevant text is in the Order granting summary judgment:
Timothy C. Batten, Sr., "ORDER" (03/21/2008)", section "B.
Threshold Issue: Trademark Ownership", case "1:06-cv-00526-
TCB", document 103, pages 15-19
 34. Jump up^ Sony, Astellas, Intel, Apple, Wal-Mart, Warner:
Intellectual Property Victoria Slind-Flor, Jul 1, 2011, Bloomberg.
The case is Loufrani v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 1:09-cv- 03062, U.S.
District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).
35. Jump up^ Smith, Aaron (2016-06-02). "Walmart's Smiley is back
after 10 years and a lawsuit". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2017-01-18.

External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to:

Smiley (category)

History of the Acid House Smiley Face

Categories:
Emoticons
Face
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