Fact of the Day (17/06/11)

The smiley face was created by Harvey Ball.

The Smiley Face

     

His design of the Smiley came about in 1963. The State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. The merger resulted in low employee morale. In an attempt to solve this, Ball was employed in 1963 as a freelance artist to create a smiley face to be used on buttons, desk cards, and posters. 


The use of the smiley face was part of the company's friendship campaign whereby State Mutual handed out 100 smiley pins to employees. The aim was to get employees to smile while using the phone and doing other tasks. . More than 50 million smiley face buttons were sold by 1971, and the smiley has been described as an international icon.