Amongst today’s youths the biggest part of their internet culture are Pictures of Smiley faces. They help to add feelings and emotions to the sentences conveyed via internet so that misunderstandings can be avoided. These are most commonly used in emails, posting the forums as well as in instant messenger chats. But very few people only know about the history that lies behind these Pictures of smiley faces. The root of all smileys is the yellow Smiley face.
This first picture of smiley face was created by Harvey Ball in the year 1963. He designed this for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company being a free lancer artist. This face described a half moon face with two black dots as eyes. But this design became popular only when Bernard and Murray Spain started using this design in novelty items in the year 1970.
Many of you would be wondering that why these pictures of smiley face is used in online communication. Most of the online communication is verbal while 90% of face to face communication is non-verbal. Hence to add emotions in online communication smiley faces picture are used very widely.
Now days they are printed widely on coffee mugs, t- shirts, stickers and even buttons with pictures of smiley faces are also available. The simplicity behind this happy face conveyed busy peoples to remain always happy and keep smiling. Many peoples have claimed trademark for yellow smiley face this days. The Wal-mart company in the year 2006 attempted to use this popular design in an advertisement campaign. But this created a dispute with Harvey Ball and “Smiley World” which is a company having the copyright of this face in many countries.
Later in 2008, Wal-mart Company lost the case because the judge found that this company does not own any trademark for this years old and famous picture. Thus Wal-mart was forced to remove the picture of smiley face from all the advertisement campaigns and website.
It can be of great sense that lots of people can design such a simple smiling face simultaneously with their own imaginations without even knowing about the others. But Harvey Ball could have had claimed the copyright trademark for his design because of high moral grounds and to stop others claiming to have the copyright of it. But he didn’t do it because he uses the money saved from licensing the picture of smiley face for the funds in a charitable organization. Thus he proved the real kindness that the picture of smiley face represents.