The Yellow Smiley Face: The Original Emoji Before We Even Knew We Needed Emojis

The Yellow Smiley Face: The Original Emoji Before We Even Knew We Needed Emojis

Two Dots, One Curve, and a Surprisingly Powerful Little Bit of Energy

Long before we were ending text messages with 😂, ❤️, 👍, or the occasionally dangerous 💩, there was a much simpler way to communicate a feeling without saying a word:

The yellow smiley face.

You know the one. Bright yellow circle. Two black eyes. Big curved smile. No complicated symbolism. No instruction manual. Just a little round face essentially telling the world:

“Hey. Maybe things aren't so bad.”

And remarkably, the modern version of this little symbol began as an attempt to change people's energy.

It Started With Some Unhappy Employees

In 1963, an insurance company in Worcester, Massachusetts, was dealing with low employee morale following a corporate merger. Graphic artist Harvey Ball was asked to create an image that could help lift spirits.

Ball reportedly created his now-famous yellow smiling face in about 10 minutes and was paid just $45 for the work. The company began putting it on buttons and other materials, and the image quickly caught on. 

Think about that.

One of the most recognizable images in popular culture came from someone essentially being told:

“People around here are grumpy. Draw us something happy.”

Ten minutes later...

History.

There's probably a lesson about overthinking in there somewhere.

Then the Smiley Went Everywhere

By the early 1970s, the smiley had exploded into popular culture. It appeared on buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers, posters, mugs, greeting cards and just about anything else with enough surface area to accommodate a yellow circle. One version was paired with the wonderfully simple message “Have a Happy Day,” and tens of millions of smiley buttons were sold. 

It became more than a design.

It became an emotional shortcut.

Before you could text someone 🙂, you could hand them a smiley-face button.

Before reaction buttons existed, we had an actual button.

Take that, technology.

The Metaphysical Power of a Simple Symbol

This is where the smiley becomes particularly interesting to me.

Symbols carry energy because we give them energy.

A heart isn't actually love.

A peace sign isn't actually peace.

And three black marks inside a yellow circle aren't actually happiness.

But the instant we see them, something happens inside our minds.

We associate.

We remember.

We feel.

That's symbolic energy.

The smiley face has been repeated for so many decades that we don't have to consciously analyze it anymore. We see it and immediately understand the intention behind it.

Positive energy lives inside that little yellow circle because generations of people have put it there.

That's pretty metaphysical for something that looks like it could have been drawn by a five-year-old.

The Smiley Was an Emoji Before Emojis

Eventually our communication moved onto computer screens and phones, and we started doing exactly the same thing digitally.

First came things like:

:-)

Then came graphical emoticons.

Then emojis.

Now we have hundreds upon hundreds of tiny symbols allowing us to conduct entire emotional conversations without constructing a complete sentence.

But the yellow smiley was already doing that job decades earlier.

It communicated:

I'm happy.

I'm friendly.

Everything's okay.

Cheer up.

I'm sending some good energy your way.

No Wi-Fi required.

Maybe Smiling Really Is an Energy Exchange

There's something else the smiley reminds us about.

Smiles are contagious.

You walk past someone and they smile at you.

Quite often, you smile back.

For a fraction of a second, two strangers exchange positive energy without knowing each other's names, beliefs, occupations, bank balances, politics, or whether either of them puts pineapple on pizza.

It's simply:

Smile → Smile.

Connection accomplished.

That's one of the simplest energetic exchanges humans have.

And the yellow smiley face managed to capture that exchange and turn it into a symbol.

A $45 Reminder That Simple Things Can Become Huge

Perhaps my favorite part of the entire smiley story is that Harvey Ball didn't spend six months developing it.

There weren't focus groups.

There wasn't an international branding campaign.

Nobody assembled a 147-page PowerPoint presentation called Strategic Facial Happiness Initiative: Phase One.

He drew something simple.

And people connected with it.

That's an incredible reminder that impact doesn't always require complexity.

Sometimes the simplest message travels the farthest.

Be kind.

Laugh more.

Love people.

Enjoy today.

Smile.

Those aren't particularly complicated spiritual teachings either.

Yet we can spend our entire lives trying to master them.

The Smiley Face Was Always About Energy

Long before it became something we tapped on a phone screen, the yellow smiley face represented an idea:

Your emotional energy matters.

One little image was originally created to help change the mood inside a workplace, and somehow that image escaped the office and traveled around the world.

That's quite a journey for two eyes and a curved line.

So the next time you see that old-school yellow smiley face, don't dismiss it as some relic from the 1970s.

Give it a little respect.

It was spreading positive vibes before anybody was talking about “positive vibes.”

It was an emoji before emojis.

It was social media before social media.

And perhaps most importantly, it continues to deliver one incredibly simple metaphysical message:

Your energy affects the people around you.

So smile once in a while.

It's free.

It's easy.

And unlike almost everything else these days...

there isn't a monthly subscription fee.

Now that's something worth smiling about as we continue to Make Peace With Life.