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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. 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. 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. 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, 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!" 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.

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.

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 "In Futurum" (the middle movement of his "Fünf Pittoresken", 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!"

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. 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. State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, wanted to raise the morale of its staff following a merger with another insurance company. 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". Ball completed the happy face in ten minutes and was paid $45 (equivalent to $473 in 2025). His rendition, with a bright yellow background, dark oval eyes, a full smile, and…