b-happy

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Text on Button b-happy
Image Description

Neon green background with black text and a simple black illustrated sideways smiley face

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The classic yellow smiley face is comprised of a yellow circle, two black dots for eyes, and a black arc ending in serifs for a mouth. It was designed in 1963 by commercial artist, Harvey Ross Ball. Ball was commissioned by The State Mutual Life Insurance Company to create a happy face to raise the morale of their employees. His version was created in 10 minutes. The design was printed onto more than 50 million buttons. Neither Ball nor the company copyrighted this smiley, so it was continually used by other businesses in their promotions.

The design and concept is quite simple and was definitely used before Ball’s 1963 version. However, his has become the most iconic. Variations have been used for advertising campaigns and in popular culture ever since.

In the 1980s the sideways smiley face was popularized by early internet users to mark jokes using :) or :-) (a combination of the keyboard's colon, dash and right parenthetical marks).

Sources

About Harvey Ball. (n.d.). Retrieved September 12, 2020, from https://www.worldsmileday.com/index.php/article-index/item/380-about-har...

Hurler, Kevin (February 19, 2022). Want to feel old? the Emoticon is 40 years old. Retrieved February 14, 2023 via https://gizmodo.com/emoticon-emoji-texting-smiley-face-1849553599

Catalog ID SM0207