In 1963 the "smiley
face", a yellow button with two black dots
representing eyes and an upturned thick curve
representing a mouth, was created by freelance
artist
Harvey Ball. It was realized on order of a large
insurance company as part of a campaign to bolster
the morale of its employees and soon became a big
hit.
The
smiley face craze, was the work of two brothers in
Philadelphia, Bernard and Murray Spain, who were in
the business of making would-be fad items. In
September of 1970 they drew up a smiley face added
the words "Have a nice day," and copyrighted the
image and words. Soon they and their many imitators
were cranking out buttons, posters, greeting cards,
shirts, bumper stickers, cookie jars, earrings,
bracelets, key chains, and many other items. The fad
lasted about a year and half; the number of smiley
buttons produced by 1972 was estimated at 50
million.
In 1979 Bob Last and
Bruce Slesinger used the smiley behind a collage of
American Governor Jerry Brown in a Nuremburg style
rally on the cover of the Dead Kennedy's Uber
Alles.
The Smiley Face featured strongly in the counter
culture book released in 1986 "Watchman".
It is a visual metaphor for the narrative that
examines failure, guilt, compromise and megalomania
which all lead ultimately to an unhappy demise.
It was in early 1988 that the smiley face exploded
once again into popular culture and remained there.
Bomb The Bass released the first reference to
Watchmen, with a blood stained smiley face logo on
the cover of the record Beat Dis. Tim Simenon
also used the Smiley repeatedly in his video for his
hit Don't Make Me Wait (Summer 1988).
Its first use as an advertisement for a dance music
club was DJ Danny Rampling putting it on the flyer
for his club Shoom (the fore runner for all rave
clubs and events). He had apparently got the
idea from designer Barnzley at the Wag Club wearing
a shirt covered "in a lot of smiley faces".
Within no time the Smiley Face had caught on
sweeping the country as the logo of Acid
House. As the music evolved it went from dream
state symbol to a counter culture image for the
underground scene and its associated drug ecstasy.
The Sun newspaper classical used the Smiley in its
front page headline "Evil of Ecstasy".
In 1991 Fantazia was founded and took the smiley
face and made it their own with the classic Fantazia
Smiley face logo that was at the heart of the
biggest raves the UK has ever scene and is still
being used to this day.
