The History of the Smiley Face

A smiley or happy face is one of the most recognizable symbols around. It is a yellow circle that has the appearance of a human face on it, with eyes and a mouth in black. There are many terms associated with this symbol, such as a smily, or smilie.

The first known graphic of a smiley face was made by Harvey Bell, an artist from Massachusetts. He made the face in 1963 for a campaign to improve employee morale. He never promoted this graphic and never trademarked it. Therefore, he never made any money from this graphic except for a $45 fee. In 1963, The Funny Company, a child's cartoon series shows images of smiley faces on the hats. David Stern, owner of an advertising agency claimed they created the smiley. He says he did not trademark it after creating it in 1967 for an ad used for Washington Mutual.

Regardless of who made it, it became very popular in the 1970's. Bernard and Murry Spain put this graphic on shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, and many other items with the phrase "Have a Happy Day". Although the smiley face also showed different emotions, it was a giant success.The smiley face was also made popular in the United Kingdom as the smiley face logo was engraved on some ecstasy tablets.

Dick Van Dyke did his part to make it more popular. In his 1963 movie Bye Bye Birdie, he drew a smiley face in the air where it could be seen on the screen. The smiley face has been a trademark of many places since 1971. Then, Smiley World was created by Franklin Loufrani and he sold the image across the U.S. and Europe. Then, in 1991, the smiley face was used for charitable causes, as they sponsor and encourage acts of kindness.

There has been many discrepancies over the trademark of the smiley face. In 2006, Wal-Mart featured the smiley face on their campaigns and got into legal conflict with Loufrani. That same year, Wal-Mart put the smiley faces on their vests and on their website. When in court, the judge ruled against Wal-Mart, saying that they did not have any rights to the smiley face, something that Wal-Mart claimed they did.

Recently, in 2008, the president of Superfone got a trademark for emoticon smileys. These are smileys used on the computer, such as :-). Oleg Teterin, the president, said he would not pursue individuals that used these but would use this trademark to have large companies pay him lots of money.

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