Smiley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The smiley, smiley face, or happy face, is a stylized representation of a smiling human face, commonly represented as a yellow button with two dots representing eyes and a half circle representing the mouth. is also sometimes used as a generic term for any emoticon.
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[edit] Origin
The origin of the smiley is not completely clear. The earliest known examples of the graphic are attributed to Harvey Ball, who devised the face in 1963 for a Worcester, Massachusetts, USA-based insurance firm, State Mutual Life Assurance. Ball never attempted to use, promote or trademark the image; it fell into the public domain in the United States before that could be accomplished.[1]
However, Franklin Loufrani of London-based company SmileyWorld says he came up with the image in 1971 for a newspaper promotion in which he displayed his icon to highlight good news. He then started developing products using this logo as a brand. The logo and the name are trademarked by Franklin Loufrani across 100 countries for most classes of goods and services. His master licensee Smileyworld is developing products with licensed partners in industries such as clothing, accessories, home textiles, food and confectionery, stationery, toys, gift items, housewares, publishing and fragrances. In 1997, his son Nicolas Loufrani started developing hundreds of variations of the Smiley logo with many different moods and categories such as weather, occupations, countries, animals, objects and so forth. He also developed a character based version with a body, arms and legs. They were the first non-text based emoticons available to use on the web.[citation needed]
David Stern of David Stern Inc., a Seattle-based advertising agency also claims to have invented the smiley. Stern reportedly developed his version in 1967 as part of an ad campaign for Washington Mutual, but says he did not think to trademark it.[2]
In 2005 Nicolas and Franklin Loufrani created the Smiley World association, a charity part of the SOS group and wholy financed by sales of Smiley products develloped by Smileyworld Ltd and Smiley industries Ltd.
[edit] Popularization
The graphic was popularized in the early 1970s by a pair of brothers, Murray and Bernard Spain, who seized upon it in a campaign to sell novelty items. The two produced buttons as well as coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers and many other items emblazoned with the symbol and the phrase "Have a happy day" (devised by Murray Spain).
The smiley was one of the many icons adopted by the acid house dance music culture that emerged in the late 1980s, as engraving famous logos on ecstasy tablets was a common practice at the time.[3]
[edit] Internet use
The smiley has become a staple of Internet culture, with animated GIF and other image representations, as well as the ubiquitous text-based emoticon, " :) ". The smiley has been used for the printable version of characters 1 and 2 (one "black," the other "white") on the default font on the IBM PC and successor compatible machines, though modern fonts for graphical user interfaces often don't include those characters.
| The following Unicode character points are smileys: | ||
| ☹ | 0x2639 | White Frowning Face |
| ☺ | 0x263a | White Smiling Face |
| ☻ | 0x263b | Black Smiling Face |
Smileys and emoticons are often used on Internet forums. Although smileys are only intended as an extra feature, some users often reply to threads with a single smiley, which often considered to be spam on many forums. However, the use of smileys, can sometimes distinguish a message between a flame and a joke. For example, "You're a bit slow, aren't you? :)" is less likely to be interpreted as an insult than without the smiley.
[edit] Smileys using computer keys
Many, many ASCII 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.
:-) :) ;) :o) :-$ *<¦:O) XD *<[8)]> =] }:-) :w
-_- +_+ ^_^ ^,..,^ ^0^y *_* !_! >_< =_=
o_o X_X -_o $_$ <_< >_> o_0 ><_>< ?_?
'_' O.O $.$ T.T ._. u.u >-<" {-_-} '='
(ì_í) (î_í) ‹(•¿•)› 6_6 ^<>^
( . Y . )<---boobies
The Wingdings font also includes a smiley: 
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 programs. In 1995, KeepTalking, a product of UNET2 Corporation, was one of the first companies to implement a text-to-graphic smiley system into their chat software, years before it became popular.[citation needed]
More recently, small, in-line graphical images of smileys and other faces have become popular, especially on blogs:
[edit] Unusual appearances of smileys
In May 2002, Luke Helder, a midwestern pipe-bomber, tried to replicate a smiley face in his pattern of pipe bombs. His first 16 bombs formed circles, the first in Nebraska and the second on the border between Illinois and Iowa. Those bombs completed the eyes. Two other bombs in Texas and Colorado were apparently the beginnings of the smile. However, he was captured before being able to complete it.
A certain species of Hawaiian spider, Theridion grallator, a.k.a. the Happyface Spider, has some morphs which display an uncanny smiley-face pattern on its yellow body.
The smallest incarnation of the smiley was created by Paul Rothemund of the California Institute of Technology. He used strands of DNA in a method he calls DNA origami to construct a complex two-dimensional nanostructure in the shape of a smiley face.
[edit] Smileys in popular culture
[edit] Advertising
- Asda & Wal-Mart use the smiley in their "Rolling Back Prices" campaign. In 2006 Wal-Mart sought to trademark the smiley face in the US, coming into legal conflict with Franklin Loufrani and SmileyWorld over the matter.[4]
- In 1986, Eat'n'Park first introduced the "Smiley" cookie.
- The Sonar electronic music festival is using Smiley as part of an advertsing campaign for its 2007 edition www.sonar.es
[edit] Art and literature
- The yellow smiley is a recurring theme in the comic book series Watchmen (Alan Moore & David Gibbons, 1986). The smiley is used as an insignia by the character named "The Comedian." An image of a smiley face with a streak of red (originally blood) across it both begins and closes the series, and appears on the cover of the graphic novel reprint.
- In Wolverine, the minor shape-changing villain Dirt Nap is recognizable by his smiley face symbol, which is retained between forms.
- In the comic book series Transmetropolitan the smiley with three eyes logo features as the symbol of the Transient Movement, a group of humans in the process of morphing their DNA with that of aliens, and was later used as a symbol of the series itself. The 2001 movie Evolution used a similar smiley in promotions a number of years later under license from Smileyworld Ltd.
- In the 2003 comic Solus a fragment of Danik is named Polla and looks like a talking smiley.
- The popular graffiti artist Banksy has used smileys in several of his works, including one that shows a man in full riot-police gear with a Smiley for a head.
- The Banksy riot-police version of the Smiley was used in the graphic novel The Smoke.
- Stephen King's reoccurring villain Randall Flagg often wears a smiley badge.
- Gahan Wilson has drawn several cartoons with smiley faces: among them, one shows a group of cops wearing smiley-face masks in an interrogation to break down the resistance of the person being interrogated.
[edit] Movies and television
- The film Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) comically featured the smiley being "invented" when the main character wipes his mud-covered face off with a yellow t-shirt, and says "Have a nice day", inspiring a struggling businessman with the makeshift design. This scene is not in the original book.
- The film Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) has a brief "smiley bombing" scene on the side of an office building. A similar face previously appeared in the Fight Club novel.
- In "Timescape," an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard drew a smiley face in the cloud created by a warp core breach in progress that was frozen in time and laughed hysterically for a moment before becoming extremely panicked, all as a result of "temporal narcosis".
- In the 1995 film Virtuosity a smiley is used to mark a restaurant where the virtual serial killer "Sid 6.7" was hiding.
- In the 2001 Evolution a three eyed Smiley is used as a symbol for aliens.
- In the 2004 film Concrete Jungle, one of the main characters is named Joe "Smiley".
- A smiley can be vaguely seen on the bloodstained medical gurney in the crash scene of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
- In Lost, one character landed on the island in a balloon with a smiley face on it.
- WWE wrestler Mick Foley's most common logo is a smiley with his trademark Mankind mask over it.
- On Google Video, there is a video series called "Smiley Face...™" with a Smiley Face created in paint and singing to different songs created by Kent Dodds Productions.
- In the 2007 film Smiley Face.
[edit] Music
- The band Nirvana used a smiley face that was altered to appear drunk or high as their logo, a good reason for this is both one of the claimants to the creation of Smileys being from Seattle – an area key to the 1990's grunge scene – and the increasing popularity of smileys throughout the 1990's.
[edit] Software
- The email program, IncrediMail widely encourages people to use animated smileys in their email message. The company designed its own style calling them "Chubbycons".
- A bespectacled smiley was used as part of the logo of the Microsoft Bob software
- The first-person shooter game MIDI Maze, 1987 (for the Atari ST) and its follow up Faceball 2000 (for various handhelds and consoles) exclusively used 3D-rendered smileys of various shapes, expressions, and colors as its players and enemies.
- In the computer game Toonstruck, King Hugh has a smiley for head; ball-shaped and yellow with the classic eyes and mouth of a smiley. Also, smilies appear several places in the country of Cutopia, where most of the beginning takes place.
- UNET2 Corporation implemented smileys in their KeepTalking chat system years before they became popular.
- "Smileys" is also the name of a gang in the Rockstar video game Manhunt.
- In the video game Black & White, the player can tattoo and choose the Smiley face as a symbol of their god.
- In the game Halo 2 on Xbox, the player's character can have a smiley on its armour.
- In the computer game System Shock, a bullet-ridden smiley can be seen on the hacker protagonist's t-shirt in the opening cinematic.
- In the game The Last Smiley on Neopets, the player plays a 3D smiley collecting 2D smiley icons.
- In the computer game Smiley COMMANDOS, Smilies are playing to outsmart each other.
- In the arcade game Berzerk (1980) and its sequel, Frenzy (1982), the menacing "Evil Otto" was a bouncing yellow smiley face.
- The iCab web browser uses a smiling or frowning face to indicate whether the code of the web page being viewed is compliant with specifications.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Who invented the smiley face? (from The Straight Dope).
- ^ Hunt, Judi. (November 15, 1988). Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Article entitled "Ad Man Sad-Faced Over Misuse of Symbol".
- ^ Ecstasy Tablet Gallery
- ^ Wal-Mart seeks smiley face rights. BBC News (8 May 2006). Retrieved on May 9, 2006.
