Music
From rave totem to txt spk emoji, the smiley remains an effervescent symbol for good times and happy revolution.
The word ‘iconic’ is overused – but what’s more iconic than the smiley? Today, we know it as the unmistakable symbol of raving, expressing the simple joy of hitting the dancefloor, together as one.
But the birth and evolution of the smiley face is stranger than you think. Over the years, it’s been an advertising logo, a hippy fad, a mode of communication and a nightlife brand – and its popularity is as unflagging as its grin. According to the Smiley company – founded by Franklin Loufrani, who first trademarked the smiley in 1972 – the symbol has 97% recognition across the world “as a symbol of positivity”. Thirty years on from the second Summer Of Love, we review some of the smiley’s key historical milestones.
1963: An advertising campaign
The year is 1963, and following a number of mergers and acquisitions, morale at the State Mutual Life Assurance Company – an insurance company in Worcester, Massachusetts – is low. The company decides to start “a friendship campaign”, and commission commercial designer Harvey Ross Ball, who designs a yellow smiley face with narrow oval eyes and a broad smile (it’s not the classic smiley symbol, but it’s close). It takes him 10 minutes, for which he’s paid the sum of $45.
1970: A hippy-age moneyspinner
By the ‘70s, the smiley face was beginning to infiltrate popular culture. Around 1970, two brothers from Philadelphia, Bernard and Murray Spain, began selling products – coffee mugs, tea trays, stationery, and so on – emblazoned with smiley faces and the slogan “Have A Happy Day” from their Hallmark card shops in Phildelphia. By the end of 1971, they’d sold over 50 million buttons – and in 1972 the smiley appeared on the cover of satirical magazine Mad.
1986: A subversive comic book plotline
The smiley symbol pops up throughout The Watchmen, a comic book by author Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons that took the superhero genre and gave it a dark spin. It’s used as the symbol of the character known as “The Comedian”, who reaches a grisly end – so Gibbons often depicts the smiley with a little splash of red blood. Gibbons spoke with Smithsonian Mag about the flexibility of the symbol: “It’s just a yellow field with three marks on it. It couldn’t be more simple. And so to that degree, it’s empty. It’s ready for meaning. If you put it in a nursery setting…It fits in well. If you take it and put it on a riot policeman’s gas mask, then it becomes something completely different.”
1987: Acid house figurehead
So how did the smiley become one of the most familiar symbols of rave hedonism? It’s all the doing of DJ Danny Rampling. In the September of ’87, Rampling had gone to Ibiza to celebrate Paul Oakenfold’s birthday, and the pair found themselves loved up and dancing at open-air bar Amnesia. Returning to London, he decided to try to recreate the vibe of Amnesia at his own night, Shoom, mixing up Balearic vibes with the new house imports coming from America. He reportedly borrowed the smiley symbol from Barnzley, designer at the Wag Club, who would wear clothes emblazoned with smilies. “The smiley symbol totally reflected the feeling and ethos of Shoom – the positivity, love, unity, fun and happiness,” says Rampling.
1992: A satirical grunge T-shirt
Rave culture was as its peak in the UK in 1991, and the smiley face was everyone. The other side of the Atlantic, though, the smiley found ironic use in the hands of another band of counterculture heroes. Nirvana – a grunge trio from the Pacific North-West – had just shocked the underground by signing to a major label, Geffen. They celebrated with a run of T-shirts emblazoned with sozzled-looking smileys, penned by the band’s singer, Kurt Cobain, and the distinctive motto ‘Flower Sniffin Kitty Pettin Baby Kissin Corporate Rock Whores’.
1994: (Re)Invented by Forrest Gump
In the Oscar-winning 1994 film, Tom Hanks’ hapless Gump somehow finds himself right at the centre of some of the defining moments of 20th Century history. In one scene, he inadvertently invents the smiley when he wipes his mud-spattered face on a yellow T-shirt, leaving a distinctive mark. “Have a nice day!”
1998: A txtspk tool
The smiley had been a part of online communication since September 1982, when Carnegie Mellon professor Scott Fahlman proposed the ‘:-)‘ configuration as a way of denoting a joke in written text. In 1999, designer Shigetaka Kurita’s emojis were rolled out across mobile phones in Japan, establishing the classic smiley as a communication tool – alongside frownies, crying faces, laughing faces, and many more.
2015: A clubbing brand
The smiley is always a bit in fashion and always a bit out of fashion – a bit like my career, really
A long-time advocate for good-times dance music, Norman Cook – aka Fatboy Slim – is something of a smiley obsessive. He got a tattoo of the acid house smiley, and has been collecting smiley-emblazoned objects for the last 20 years. “I’ve got everything from vintage acid house badges to the original 70s patches to toasters and condoms… I think the smiley condoms are the weirdest,” he told Red Bull in 2016.
In 2015, Cook launched the Smile High Club, a series of smiley-inspired shows. “The idea was to create a club where the emphasis is on being slightly stupid without resorting to slapstick,” he explained. At them, clubbers could visit the “acid convertor” and have their body sprayed yellow – while at Creamfields, he got clubbers to create a thousand-strong human smiley that could be seen from space. “The smiley is a universal welcome, a gesture of your intent,” says Cook. “It’s never quite been in fashion, but it’s never quite gone out of fashion either. Every now and then some designer will take it on and try to make it fashionable, but it’s always been a bit goofy and stupid. It’s always a bit in fashion and always a bit out of fashion – a bit like my career, really.”