A
smiley, or
happy face (☺/☻), is a stylized representation of a smiling human face, commonly represented as a yellow (many other colors are also used) circle (or sphere) with two black dots representing eyes and a black half circle representing the mouth. “Smiley” is also sometimes used as a generic term for any
emoticonAn emoticon is a textual face of a writer's mood or facial expression. They are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau of the English words emotion and icon...
.
The variant spelling "smilie" is not as common, but the plural form "smilies" (the plural of "smily", not "smiley") is commonly used.
Popularization
Harvey BallHarvey Ross Ball is the earliest known designer of the Smiley.-Military Service:Harvey Ball was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts...
designed the first Smiley in 1963 while working at State Mutual Life Assurance Company as a freelance artist. However, the first smiley face recorded on film can be seen being drawn in Ingmar Bergman's film "Hamnstad", released in 1948. The film is a drama about a depressed and suicidal young woman named Berit, in one scene she draws an unhappy face on the bathroom mirror using her lipstick.
The graphic was popularized in the early 1970s by Bernard and Murray Spain, who seized upon it in a campaign to sell novelty items. The two produced buttons as well as
coffeeCoffee is a brewed beverage prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. They are seeds of "coffee cherries" that grow on trees in over 70 countries. It has been said that green coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world behind crude oil. Due to its...
mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers and many other items emblazoned with the symbol and the phrase "Have a happy day" (devised by Gyula Bogar).
In the UK, the smiley is associated with, among other things,
Ubi DwyerBill 'Ubi' Dwyer was an anarchist activist in New Zealand, Australia, England and his native Ireland best known as the originator and principal organiser of the Windsor Free Festival....
of the
Windsor Free FestivalThe Windsor Free Festival was a British Free Festival held in Windsor Great Park from 1972 to 1974. Organised by some London commune dwellers, notably Ubi Dwyer and Sid Rawle, it was in many ways the forerunner of the Stonehenge Free Festival, particularly in the brutality of its final suppression...
and the
acid houseAcid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed by mid-1980s DJs from Chicago who experimented with the Roland TB-303...
dance musicThis article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop.Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
culture that emerged during the
second summer of loveThe Second Summer of Love is a name given to the period in 1988-89 in Britain, during the rise of Acid House music and the euphoric explosion of unlicensed ecstasy-fuelled rave parties...
in the late 1980s. The face was used as an
engraved logo on
ecstasyMDMA is a psychoactive amphetamine drug with entactogenic, psychedelic, and stimulant effects....
tablets at the time. The association was cemented when the band
Bomb The BassBomb the Bass is the umbrella title for the output of British musician and producer, Tim Simenon. The band, which has evolved its style over the years, has been classed as electronic or dance....
used an extracted smiley from
WatchmenWatchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted into a collected graphic novel...
on the centre of its
Beat Dis"Beat Dis" is a track by British act Bomb the Bass, a studio production formed by producer Tim Simenon, from the act's album Into the Dragon...
hit single.
Licensing and legal issues
Smiley has been a registered trademark in some countries since 1971 when French journalist Franklin Loufrani created "Smiley World" to sell, advertise and license the smiley face image in the United Kingdom and Europe. The Smiley name and logo is registered and used in over 100 countries for 25 classes of goods and services. Loufrani has created the icon in 1971 to highlight good news in newspaper articles.
In 1999, Harvey Ball formed World Smile Corporation and began licensing the smiley face to fund his undiscovered charitable causes. Profits are distributed to charities through the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation, which also sponsors the annual World Smile Day Ball started in 1999 to encourage "acts of kindness."
In 2006
Wal-MartWal-Mart Stores, Inc. is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. It is the world's largest public corporation by revenue, according to the 2008 Fortune Global 500. The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and...
, which prominently featured a smiley in its "Rolling Back Prices" campaign, sought to trademark the smiley face in the United States, coming into legal conflict with Loufrani and Smiley World over the matter. In 2006 Wal-mart began to phase out the smiley face on its vests and its website. During a trademark infringement case against an online parodist, Wal-Mart again tried to claim it held the
trademarkA trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from...
rights to the yellow smiley face. In March 2008, Wal-Mart lost the case and the judge stated in his decision that Wal-Mart did not own rights to the smiley face.
In 2008, the
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
entrepeneur Oleg Teterin, president of the mobile phone company Superfone, claimed a trademark for the
emoticonAn emoticon is a textual face of a writer's mood or facial expression. They are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau of the English words emotion and icon...
smiley that included ownership of ;-) and closely related smileys. He says he does not intend to go after individual users, but rather intends for companies who plan to use the emoticons to pay him royalties.
In 2009 Loufrani lost his case in the EU when he tried to register the right half of the Smiley-mouth as a separate trademark.
Typographical smileys
Many typographical representations of smiley faces have been developed over the years. Some feature non-smiling expressions or other elaborations. They come in two main varieties, those meant to be viewed sideways, and those meant to be seen upright.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
!width=50|Icon
!width=300|Meaning
|-
|:-)
|classic smile with nose (Unicode: ☺ #263A)
|-
|:-(
|classic frown with nose (Unicode: ☹ #2639)
|-
|:)
|classic smile without nose
|-
| to indicate a joke and :-( to mark things that are not a joke were invented on September 19, 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman, a research professor at
Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently ranked among the best in the world...
's Department of Computer Science. His original post at the CMU CS general board, where he suggested the use of the smileys, was retrieved on September 10, 2002 by Jeff Baird from an October 1982 backup tape of the spice vax (cmu-750x) as proof to support the claim.
More recently, small, in-line graphical images of smileys and other faces have become popular, especially on
forumAn ', or message board, is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content...
s:
{|class="wikitable"
|-
!width=50|Smiley
!width=300|Expression
|-
|
|Simple Smile is usually written like this, :) or (:
|-
|
|Confused Smiley is usually written like this, :S or S:
|-
|
|Simple Frown is usually written like this, :
|-
|
|Shocked Smiley is usually written like this, :O or O:
|-
|
|Smiley with Tongue sticking out is usually written like this, :P or q: or :p. If you use ASCII keys then, :Þ, is also possible. Press ALT + keypad0222 for "Þ"
|-
|
|Smiley with big grin is usually written like this, :D
|}
The reverse, or left-handed, smileys (-: have also gained popularity for being a way to avoid having text smileys converted to graphical representations in certain settings such as
instant messaging programsInstant messaging is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet.-Overview:...
.
Fictional use
In the movie
Forrest GumpForrest Gump is a American comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, and Gary Sinise...
,
Tom HanksThomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title role in Forrest Gump, Commander James...
' character of the same name is splattered with mud by a passing truck when running across America. A tee-shirt designer, who is struggling to think of a new design, hands him a tee-shirt to wipe off the mud. The imprint left in the mud stain is a smiley face; As Forrest runs off, he tells the man "Have a nice day" and the designer realizes this is the design he has been looking for.
Many smileys appear in the film
Repo ManRepo Man is a 1984 cult film directed by Alex Cox. It was produced by Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy, with executive producer Michael Nesmith, and stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton.- Plot :...
, as well as posters for "Harry Pace for City Council" ("Happy Face").
A bloodstained Smiley badge is featured as the most prominent motif and recurring piece of imagery in
Alan MooreAlan Oswald Moore is an English writer known for work in comics, including the acclaimed comic book series Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell...
's 1986 comic series
WatchmenWatchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted into a collected graphic novel...
, as well as its 2009
film adaptationWatchmen is a 2009 superhero film directed by Zack Snyder and starring Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson. It is an adaptation of the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons...
. The badge belongs to a murdered "Adventurer" (Hero) known as The Comedian and prominently features a line of red blood crossing over the Smiley's left eye (right-hand side, left side visually) mimicking the position a clock face set at five minutes to midnight (another motif of the Comics). In later reissues and reprints of the comic series, the Bloodstained Smiley Badge, particularly the left eye, became a symbol for the series as a whole and serves as the cover art to the paperback graphic novel.
EvolutionEvolution is a 2001 comedy sci-fi movie directed by Ivan Reitman. It is based on a story by Don Jakoby, who converted it into a screenplay along with David Diamond and David Weissman. The movie was originally written as a serious horror science fiction film, until director Ivan Reitman re-wrote...
is a
2001The year 2001 in film involved some significant events. -Top-grossing films:...
comedyComedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. Also, films in this style typically have a happy ending . One of the oldest genres in film, some of the very first silent movies were comedies...
sci-fiScience fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that aren't necessarily accepted by mainstream science. such as extra-terrestrial life forms, alien worlds, and time travel, often along with technological elements such as futuristic...
movieFilm encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects....
directed by
Ivan ReitmanIvan Reitman is an American-based Canadian film producer and director. He is known for the comedies he has directed and produced, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.-Early life:...
. The movie uses a '
three-eyedEvolution is a 2001 comedy sci-fi movie directed by Ivan Reitman. It is based on a story by Don Jakoby, who converted it into a screenplay along with David Diamond and David Weissman. The movie was originally written as a serious horror science fiction film, until director Ivan Reitman re-wrote...
' smiley to show the evolution of the standard smiley. The three-eyed smiley face used as the logo of the film in marketing was borrowed from the comic book
TransmetropolitanTransmetropolitan is a post-cyberpunk comic book series written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson and published by DC Comics...
. Producers had to get permission from
DC ComicsDC Comics is one of the largest and most popular American comic book and related media companies, along with Marvel Comics. It is the publishing division of DC Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary company of Warner Bros. Entertainment...
to use it and were licensed by Smileyworld Ltd., owner of the smiley face trademark, to use it for advertising and commercial purposes.
Rockstar GamesRockstar Games is a video game developer and publisher owned by Take-Two Interactive. The brand is mostly known for the Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne and Midnight Club series. It comprises studios that have been acquired and renamed as well as others that have been created internally...
has used Smiley faces often for ironic purposes. In
Grand Theft Auto 2Grand Theft Auto 2 is a video game that was released worldwide on October 22, 1999, by developer DMA Design ; initially for the Windows operating system and the PlayStation console. The game was later ported to the Dreamcast console and the Game Boy Color. It is the sequel to 1997 hit Grand Theft...
, a gang known as "The Loonies" has a Smiley face as their icon. In the game
ManhuntManhunt is a stealth game developed by Rockstar Games, it was released November 18, 2003 for the PlayStation 2 video game console, and April 20, 2004 for Xbox and Windows. Although it was generally well-received by critics, Manhunt created a controversy due to the graphic violence the player is...
, a gang of psychotics known as "The Smileys" wear smiley face masks, some often covered in blood, or with pieces broken off.
In the series
The MentalistThe Mentalist is an American crime procedural television series which debuted on September 23, 2008 on CBS.-Premise:The Mentalist follows Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, an independent consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation based in Sacramento, California. He has a remarkable track...
, the antagonist
Red JohnRed John is an unseen character on the television series The Mentalist; he is a serial killer who murdered the wife and daughter of protagonist Patrick Jane five years prior to the first episode.-The Face:...
uses the smiley face as his signature, which he creates using the victim's blood and makes the circle with three fingers clockwise with a rubber kitchen glove. Because it is made from blood, the dripping makes it look as if it is crying.
See also
- Emoticon
An emoticon is a textual face of a writer's mood or facial expression. They are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau of the English words emotion and icon...
- Kaoani
Kaoani comes from the Japanese and . Kaoanis are little animated smilies that usually bounce up and down to look like they are floating. The originating country of the kaoani is Japan. Kaoanis are also known as puffs, anime blobs, anikaos or anime emoticons.Kaoani can take the form of animals,...
- List of emoticons
- ASCII art (text/ASCII smileys)