Marchetti and his team pieced together fragments of a Hittite pot from approximately 1700 BC that had been found in Karkamış, Turkey. The oldest known smiling face was found by a team of archaeologists led by Nicolò Marchetti of the University of Bologna. Ideogram history Early history of smiling faces įor thousands of years, smiling faces have been used as ideograms and as pictograms. Smiley has since become a broader term that often includes both the ideogram design, but also emojis that use the same yellow and black design. These are digital interpretations of the smiley ideogram and have since become the most commonly used set of emojis since they adopted by Unicode in 2006 onwards. The ideogram has since been used as a foundation to create emoticon emojis. The name smiley became commonly used in the 1970s and 1980s as the yellow and black ideogram began to appear more in popular culture.

The smiley accompanied positive news in the newspaper and eventually became the foundation for the licensing operation, The Smiley Company. The word smiley was used by Franklin Loufrani in France, when he registered his smiley design for trademark while working as a journalist for France Soir in 1971. The Spain brothers used the slogan Have a nice day, which is now frequently known for the slogan rather than the naming of the smiley. The label was due to the fact the badges were designed for commercial use for an insurance company. It was however labeled as 'The Smile Insurance Company' which appeared on the back of the badges he created. When Ball's design was completed, it was not given an official name. Early designs were often called 'smiling face' or 'happy face.' In 1961 the WMCA's Good Guys, incorporated a black smiley onto a yellow sweatshirt, and it was nicknamed the 'happy face.' The Spain brothers and Harvey Ross Ball both had designs in the 70s that concentrated more on slogans than the actual name of the smiley. James Russell Lowell used the line 'All kin' o' smily roun' the lips' in his poem The Courtin’. The earliest known use of 'smiley' as an adjective for 'having a smile' or 'smiling' in print was in 1848. Terminology The smiley face of Sabritas named Willie, having a open mouth. They are loosely based on the ideograms designed in the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the yellow and black design. Since then, those Fahlman's designs have become digital pictograms, known as emoticons. This began with Scott Fahlman in the 1980s when he first theorized ASCII characters could be used to create faces and demonstrate emotion in text. Today, the smiley face has evolved from an ideogram into a template for communication and use in written language. Competing terms were used such as smiling face and happy face before consensus was reached on the term smiley, less often spelled 'smilie'. In October of 1971 Loufrani trademarked the name and his design in France while working as a journalist for France Soir. Today, The Smiley Company holds many rights to the smiley ideogram and has become one of the biggest licensing companies globally. More yellow-and-black designs appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, including works by Franklin Loufrani and Harvey Ross Ball. A yellow and black design was used by New York–based radio station WMCA for its ' Good Guys' campaign in the early 1960s.

More elaborate designs in the 1950s emerged, with noses, eyebrows, and outlines. The smiley began as two dots and a line to represent eyes and a mouth. Since the 1950s it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram, or as a form of communication, such as emoticons. For other uses, see Smiley Face (disambiguation) and Happy face (disambiguation).Įxample of a smiley face An example of an emoticon smiley face (represented using a colon followed by a parenthesis) used in direct communication, as seen in this screenshot of an email.Ī smiley, sometimes referred to as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram that represents a smiling face.

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