The Secret Origin of the Smiley Face

The smiley face is so familiar that it feels like it has always been around. Two eyes, a curved mouth and a yellow circle became one of the most recognizable symbols in the world, but its origin is surprisingly ordinary: an insurance company had a morale problem, a local artist was given a simple assignment, and about ten minutes later, Harvey Ball had drawn a face that would eventually become a cultural phenomenon.

In December 1963, State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, was dealing with low employee morale after a merger with another insurance company. The company wanted something cheerful for its employees, so it hired Ball, a local commercial artist, to create a simple design for a “friendship campaign.” Ball sat down, drew a yellow circle with two black oval eyes and a curved smile, and finished the job in about ten minutes. He was paid $45.

State Mutual initially ordered 100 buttons featuring Ball’s design, but the response was strong and additional orders followed in batches of 10,000. The little yellow face soon escaped the insurance company and began appearing on promotional material, but Ball and State Mutual never trademarked the original design, leaving the door open for someone else to turn the smiley into a business.

In the early 1970s, Philadelphia brothers Bernard and Murray Spain saw the opportunity and began selling the smiley with the words “Have a Happy Day,” later changed to “Have a Nice Day.” They trademarked that combination and turned the image into a merchandising machine, selling more than 50 million buttons by the end of 1971. Ball, meanwhile, had received his $45 and watched his little drawing become worth considerably more to other people.

Ball apparently wasn’t consumed by the money, but he did want recognition for creating the original design. When asked about the fortune others were making from the smiley, he reportedly put it rather perfectly: “I’d like the money, but I want the credit, too.”

Then, in the late 1980s, the smiley face got a completely different life. British Acid House and rave culture adopted the yellow face as its unofficial symbol, with DJ Danny Rampling commissioning artist George Georgiou to feature a smiley on a flyer for his London club night Shoom. By 1988, during Britain’s so-called Second Summer of Love, the smiley was everywhere on rave flyers, badges, T-shirts and other merchandise. The same face that had been created to cheer up insurance employees in Worcester was now representing a youth culture built around electronic music, clubs and all-night raves.

That may be the strangest thing about Harvey Ball’s creation. He spent ten minutes drawing a simple face for an insurance company and was paid $45, while other people turned it into a fortune and an entirely different generation turned it into the symbol of a cultural movement. Ball wanted the money, but he also wanted the credit, and maybe that’s the real story hiding behind the smile: once an idea escapes into the world, you never really know what it is going to become, who is going to profit from it, or who will remember that you created it in the first place.