The smiley face—ubiquitous, deceptively simple, and profoundly versatile—has left an indelible mark on our visual and cultural lexicon. In a new release, The Sm;)e Book, co-authors Rich Browd and DB Burkeman unravel the complex narrative behind this circular emblem of emotion. This is not merely a compendium of visual curiosities but a comprehensive deep-dive into the smiley’s long, tangled history—spanning ancient civilizations, underground subcultures, global advertising, and contemporary fine art.
After five years of meticulous research and passionate curation, the book distills the smiley’s evolution from ancient pottery to contemporary gallery installations. By weaving together graphic history, countercultural commentary, and visual storytelling, The Sm;)e Book seeks to reclaim the symbol from banality, reminding the world that the smiley is far more than just a cheerful yellow face.
A Collaborative Homage to Visual Symbolism
Rich Browd, a multidisciplinary artist rooted in contemporary visual culture, and DB Burkeman, a former rave DJ turned esteemed curator, have come together in a shared artistic pursuit to uncover the story of one of the most ubiquitous icons in graphic history—the smiley face. Their project, The Sm;)e Book, is the result of five years of exploration, curation, and visual anthropology. Rather than merely compiling imagery, they’ve created a layered narrative that dissects the symbol’s cultural DNA.
Contributors to this rich visual anthology include avant-garde artists, musicians, and visual provocateurs such as Jeremy Deller, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Alicia McCarthy, Wolfgang Tillmans, Fatboy Slim, Rachel Maclean, and Richard Prince. These individuals bring unique perspectives to the emblem, reimagining it through various artistic lenses—often imbuing it with satire, sarcasm, philosophical inquiry, or socio-political commentary.
The smiley’s uncanny ability to oscillate between cheer and critique has solidified its place across artistic disciplines. Whether it’s spray-painted on city walls, reworked into high-fashion garments, displayed in conceptual art installations, or transformed into digital memes, the symbol functions as a cultural amplifier—reflecting societal moods while retaining its instantly recognizable simplicity.
The Smiley’s Dual Identity: Euphoria and Dissent
What makes the smiley such an enduring symbol isn't its cheerful demeanor alone, but its inherent dualism. This seemingly innocent icon has lived a double life—embraced as a corporate tool to project positivity, and at the same time, subverted by countercultures to challenge the status quo. As highlighted in The Sm;)e Book, its presence is as common on "Have a Nice Day" mugs as it is on protest banners and anti-establishment ephemera.
Rich Browd underscores this dichotomy in the book’s preface, noting that the smiley’s genius lies in its ambivalence. Its round face and wide grin offer a blank canvas, adaptable enough to be either sincere or ironic depending on context. Burkeman elaborates further: “There’s no other symbol that has functioned so clearly as both a mainstream emblem of joy and a countercultural tool of critique.”
This coexistence of innocence and rebellion is rare in graphic history. Most symbols are defined by singular associations. The peace sign, for instance, is almost exclusively linked with anti-war movements. The smiley, however, wears many hats—sometimes naively optimistic, sometimes menacingly sarcastic. Its endurance stems from this fluidity.
Unearthing Ancient Origins of the Smiling Motif
Long before it was digitized or commercialized, the idea of a smiling face as a communicative device had already taken root in ancient societies. One of the earliest depictions of a smiling visage was uncovered in Karkamış, Turkey, dating back to approximately 1700 BCE. Etched into a ceramic pot, this rudimentary face offers archaeological proof that the act of stylizing human emotion predates modern graphic design by millennia.
These ancient designs weren’t just primitive doodles—they served as emblematic tools possibly used for ceremonial or communal purposes. The smile, even then, may have been a symbolic gesture of goodwill or unity.
Jumping to the industrial era, a more structured version of the smiling face surfaced in 1919, when the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company printed an ornate, friendly face on its invoices. Though commercial in intent, the gesture reflected early marketing psychology: to establish emotional rapport with the customer. This antique smiley predates the now-famous yellow iteration by several decades and hints at the ongoing human impulse to encode friendliness and trust into visual media.
The Rise of the Modern Smiley and Legal Battles
The now-iconic yellow smiley emerged in 1963 when graphic designer Harvey Ball was hired by a Massachusetts insurance firm to create a morale-boosting image for employee buttons. With slight asymmetry and minimal strokes, his version conveyed a warmth that balanced professional simplicity and emotional clarity. Ball was paid just $45 for this commission—never anticipating that the symbol would explode into a global visual language.
But it wasn’t until 1970 that the smiley became a mass-market commodity. Brothers Bernard and Murray Spain, entrepreneurs from Philadelphia, added the phrase “Have a Nice Day” and plastered the image onto pins, t-shirts, mugs, and countless novelty items. Their efforts birthed a commercial phenomenon, but also initiated heated debates about copyright and ownership.
Across the Atlantic, French journalist Franklin Loufrani claimed to have independently popularized the smiley in Europe around the same time. His version became central to the brand SmileyWorld, spawning decades of legal wrangling over intellectual property rights. These disputes reflect the broader challenge of attributing ownership to symbols that feel universal—reminding us that even the most cheerful faces can be flashpoints for contention.
A Countercultural Beacon in Punk, Comics, and Satire
By the late 1970s, the smiley was no longer confined to gift shops and insurance offices—it began appearing in underground art scenes and alternative media. Punk rockers, graphic novelists, and political dissidents re-appropriated the image, twisting its cheery façade into something confrontational.
Robert Crumb incorporated it into his Mr. Natural series, injecting a sense of irony into the once-innocent symbol. The Dead Kennedys, never ones to shy from controversy, famously replaced swastikas with smiley faces in a 1979 artwork that criticized authoritarianism in California. These subversions proved that the smiley could function as both camouflage and critique—a Trojan horse of visual activism.
In 1986, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons crystallized this duality in their groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen. The blood-splattered smiley pin worn by The Comedian became a haunting juxtaposition of idealism and violence, optimism shattered by harsh truths. That single image embedded the smiley into the pantheon of culturally complex icons.
The Acid House Renaissance and Dancefloor Iconography
No cultural movement has embraced the smiley with as much fervor as the acid house scene of the late 1980s. In 1987, Danny Rampling launched Shoom, a now-legendary London club that became synonymous with the rave explosion. Inside Shoom’s pulsating walls, the smiley was omnipresent—on flyers, backdrops, t-shirts, and more. It became a badge of collective euphoria and liberation.
This wasn’t accidental. For ravers experiencing emotional highs and sonic transcendence, the smiley was the perfect totem—its simplicity and positivity mirrored the spirit of the music and the movement. It was less a graphic and more a sigil, a sign that one had entered an alternate state of consciousness.
As rave culture evolved into jungle, drum and bass, and hardcore, the smiley continued to adapt. Suburban Base, a seminal hardcore label, introduced a comic-style mascot with a smiley face, designed by artist Dave Nodz. This exaggerated, often grotesque character became part of the rave folklore—simultaneously playful and subversive.
The Smiley in Contemporary Media, Art, and Culture
The smiley’s omnipresence has only grown in the 21st century. It has infiltrated every conceivable medium—from fashion editorials and music videos to NFTs and social media avatars. In The Simpsons, it’s used to comment on consumerism. In David Bowie’s Blackstar, it appears as an enigmatic, almost spiritual motif. In online culture, emojis—digital descendants of the smiley—serve as daily communicative currency.
What’s astonishing is how the smiley manages to stay culturally nimble. It is as at home in high fashion as it is in a basement zine. It has appeared in works by Takashi Murakami, Banksy, and Virgil Abloh—each artist using it not as decoration, but as a vehicle for commentary.
The Sm;)e Book captures this versatility by showcasing not only artworks but also ephemera, historical archives, and personal collections. This diversity of material reinforces one truth: the smiley is not static. It grows, mutates, absorbs, and reflects—always echoing the times.
From Morale Booster to Pop Culture Phenomenon
The now universally recognized yellow smiley face was born in 1963, when Harvey Ball, a Massachusetts-based freelance graphic designer, was asked to create a simple morale-enhancing image for a small insurance firm. In under ten minutes, Ball sketched a round face with oval eyes and a slightly off-center smile—an emblem so straightforward it seemed innocuous. He received a mere $45 for his work. Unbeknownst to Ball, his minimalistic drawing would evolve into a global visual phenomenon, reshaping the language of design and branding forever.
The symbol began its meteoric rise in 1970, when entrepreneurial brothers Bernard and Murray Spain saw its untapped commercial potential. They added the phrase “Have a Nice Day” to Ball’s smiley and plastered the image on thousands of products—buttons, t-shirts, mugs, lunchboxes, and even wallpaper. This campaign exploded into a cultural craze, embedding the smiley into public consciousness across the United States.
However, the rapid proliferation of the smiley sparked a convoluted international ownership battle. In France, journalist Franklin Loufrani independently developed and trademarked a similar smiley logo in 1971. He launched it through a newspaper initiative, branding it “Smiley” to signify positive news. His company would later evolve into SmileyWorld, a global licensing empire. Decades of legal disputes followed, with American and European factions claiming origination and legal control over the symbol. This legal wrangling underscores a deeper irony: a face meant to symbolize happiness had become the center of corporate rivalry and courtroom contention.
Despite the disputes, what emerged from this chapter was a realization of the symbol’s immense cultural currency. The smiley was no longer just a graphic—it had transformed into a brand, an aesthetic, and a mirror reflecting the cultural zeitgeist of postwar optimism, consumerism, and emotional branding.
The Countercultural Embrace: Comics, Punk, and Dissent
As the smiley’s commercial star rose in the mainstream, underground artists and subcultures began to recontextualize the icon in darker, more ironic tones. In the 1970s, it found fertile ground in the countercultural milieu—particularly in underground comics, anarchist zines, and punk ephemera. One of the first alternative uses came from Robert Crumb, who embedded smiley faces into his Mr. Natural comic series. In Crumb’s hands, the smiley became a sardonic expression, challenging post-hippie consumerism and the hollow promises of American prosperity.
The symbol’s deeper transformation came in 1986 with the release of Watchmen, the critically acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The story’s morally ambiguous antihero, The Comedian, wears a yellow smiley pin splattered with blood—an image that has since become one of the most indelible in modern comics. This singular visual speaks volumes: optimism tarnished by violence, cheerfulness masking nihilism. The smiley was no longer merely benign; it had become metaphorical armor.
Punk culture embraced this duality with gusto. The Dead Kennedys, known for their blistering critiques of American politics, famously replaced swastikas with smiley faces in a 1979 poster condemning authoritarian elements in California government. This provocative remix weaponized the icon as a vessel for irony and defiance. The same year, political zines began using distorted or decaying smileys as visual shorthand for dystopian commentary, reflecting society's descent into apathy and artificial happiness.
Even glam rock artists like Marc Bolan adopted the smiley into their wardrobes—not as kitsch, but as an emblem of self-aware theatricality. By the early 1980s, what was once a happy-go-lucky design had become a complex cipher: loved by rebels, questioned by critics, and reimagined with every generation.
Smiley and the Acid House Revolution
No movement redefined the smiley more explosively than acid house. Emerging from the underground club scenes of London, Manchester, and Ibiza in the late 1980s, acid house was a musical and social revolution that celebrated hedonism, unity, and escapism. At the epicenter of this cultural eruption was Shoom, a now-legendary nightclub founded by DJ Danny Rampling in 1987.
Inside Shoom, the walls were drenched in day-glow smileys. Flyers, merchandise, and rave posters were flooded with the symbol, often distorted, pixelated, or melting. The smiley became visual shorthand for altered consciousness and collective euphoria. It was more than a graphic—it was an emblem of a movement that defied rigid political conservatism, conventional nightlife, and the linear march of Western productivity.
Rampling viewed the smiley as the perfect visual motif for a scene defined by inclusivity and transcendence. The music was ecstatic, the atmosphere surreal, and the smiley fit this ethos like a glove. It echoed the sense of joy and liberation shared by thousands of ravers packed into abandoned warehouses, open fields, or converted clubs.
As rave culture evolved into offshoots like hardcore, jungle, and drum & bass, the smiley mutated along with it. Suburban Base, a pivotal label in the hardcore scene, introduced a vivid cartoon character with a giant smiley face, designed by Dave Nodz. This stylized mascot embodied the movement’s intensity—part satire, part superhero, part hallucinogenic hallucination. Whether grimacing or grinning, these new smileys spoke to a generation dancing through dystopia.
The Smiley in Global Pop Culture
By the 1990s and into the 2000s, the smiley had permeated global pop culture, transitioning from rave icon to mainstream staple—without losing its subversive edge. Fashion designers began adopting it into collections that blurred the line between streetwear and haute couture. High-profile brands and pop musicians turned to the smiley as a nostalgic reference point, embedding it in music videos, album covers, and stage design.
TV shows like The Simpsons used the smiley as both a parody and tribute. Music videos from artists such as Nirvana, Blink-182, and The Chemical Brothers referenced the symbol in various guises—sometimes warped, sometimes glowing, sometimes crying. In each context, the smiley stood as a silent but potent character, reflecting the emotional terrain of the era.
In 2015, David Bowie’s Blackstar video featured cryptic symbols including elements reminiscent of the smiley. This wasn’t accidental. The smiley had become a ghost in the machine of modern media—a reminder that symbols evolve, persist, and acquire new meaning in different cultural climates.
Its power lies in its adaptability. Whether drawn on a protest sign in Cairo, embroidered on a hoodie in Tokyo, or animated in a video game in Los Angeles, the smiley retains a unique ability to unite disparate cultures and ideologies through visual simplicity and emotional resonance.
Digital Expression and the Emoji Evolution
With the advent of digital communication in the 21st century, the smiley’s visual DNA has mutated into its most ubiquitous form yet: the emoji. While not exact replicas, these pixel-based expressions are descendants of the original smiley, carrying forth its emotional essence in every text message, tweet, and meme.
The emoji smiley—often accompanied by tears of joy, winks, or hearts—has become a cornerstone of online expression. It allows users to convey nuance, sarcasm, affection, or amusement in a single character. Yet its visual lineage is unmistakable. Harvey Ball’s invention echoes in every emoji-laden message, tying digital shorthand to analog sentimentality.
Brands, marketers, and social media influencers have all recognized the power of these simplified faces. The modern smiley—now animated, interactive, and globally accessible—has become a semiotic powerhouse. It allows for instantaneous communication while referencing decades of cultural complexity. Far from fading into obsolescence, the smiley has found new life in the pixelated lexicon of the internet.
A Symbol That Defies Time
What makes the smiley truly extraordinary is not just its longevity, but its chameleon-like ability to transcend purpose and perception. It can be a brand, a protest, a joke, or a comfort. Its simplicity is its strength, and its lack of specificity allows it to slip into countless roles.
Unlike most symbols that fade or calcify over time, the smiley thrives on reinvention. It can be distorted into psychedelic spirals, stamped on high-fashion garments, or embedded in glitch art. Artists from Takashi Murakami to Banksy have played with its form, using it to explore themes ranging from consumerism to existential dread.
Even as visual culture becomes increasingly complex, the smiley remains instantly readable. Its endurance lies in this paradox—profound in its shallowness, revolutionary in its blandness. It’s the ultimate postmodern icon: endlessly reproducible, infinitely adaptable, and rich with cultural resonance.
Digital Age and Multimedia Presence
The smiley face, with its iconic yellow hue and unwavering grin, has not only survived the digital era—it has flourished within it. As cultural content becomes increasingly fragmented and media more immersive, the smiley adapts effortlessly, finding relevance across a vast spectrum of digital and multimedia platforms. Its malleability enables it to thrive in both high-definition cinema and low-resolution GIFs, establishing itself as a bridge between old-school iconography and modern digital semiotics.
In television, its appearances are both humorous and critical. The Simpsons, America’s satirical mirror, has utilized the smiley numerous times to parody consumer culture and social complacency. Meanwhile, music videos like David Bowie’s Blackstar introduce the symbol with eerie, almost esoteric nuance, transforming it into a motif that suggests spiritual ambiguity and metaphysical commentary.
In visual design, the smiley has found a renewed pulse in vaporwave and glitch art, where nostalgia collides with digital decay. It appears as an artifact of a lost future—pixelated, melting, and looping endlessly on Instagram feeds or YouTube loops. On social media platforms, particularly TikTok and Instagram, reinterpretations of the smiley thrive through filters, animations, and emoji culture, turning it into both a nostalgic nod and a postmodern satire.
The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has further extended its reach. Artists across the blockchain ecosystem have reimagined the smiley as collectible, dynamic assets—morphing with each transaction, layered with code, often hyper-saturated or fragmented into surreal abstractions. This new form of digital ownership adds another dimension to its lifecycle, placing it on the forefront of visual experimentation and crypto-aesthetics.
Despite existing in a saturated media environment, the smiley doesn’t just endure—it reinvents. From minimalist web banners to elaborate augmented reality experiences, it has become an indispensable visual shorthand for emotional expression, nostalgia, irony, and rebellion in the virtual landscape.
A Living Archive for Pop Culture Enthusiasts
More than a static chronicle, The Sm;)e Book presents the smiley as a living, breathing archive of pop culture and visual rebellion. This isn’t a collection designed for reverence—it’s a book meant to spark engagement, provoke curiosity, and inspire reinterpretation. Each page functions like a curated lens into the infinite adaptations and appropriations of the smiley across generations and ideologies.
The contributing artists and cultural voices are refreshingly diverse: graffiti legends, digital illustrators, fashion provocateurs, rave-era veterans, and collectors of ephemeral pop detritus. Their shared fascination lies in the smiley’s adaptability and enduring subtext. Within its minimal geometry lies a chaotic range of meanings—sincere joy, subversive critique, sardonic commentary, and absurdist comedy.
Streetwear collectors see in the smiley a totem of rebellion, stamped across bucket hats, patches, and urban backdrops. Museum curators view it as a minimalist icon with postmodern implications. Social media users wield it as shorthand for irony, sarcasm, or exaggerated friendliness. NFT developers turn it into dynamic assets, living on decentralized platforms and reacting to trends in real time.
What sets The Sm;)e Book apart is its refusal to fossilize the icon. Instead of treating it as a closed chapter of 20th-century design, the book embraces the smiley as an evolutionary force—a symbol that mutates with each cultural wave while maintaining its enigmatic potency. It offers visual proof that this seemingly naive image has a darker, more complex emotional vocabulary embedded within its perpetual grin.
Symbol of Continuity in a Fractured World
In an increasingly polarized and volatile world, the smiley serves as a bizarre yet comforting visual constant. Amid socio-political division, algorithmic overload, and mounting climate anxiety, the smiley remains curiously undisturbed—a beacon of both simplicity and complexity. Its fixed gaze and curved mouth offer the illusion of stability in an era that feels anything but.
The reason for its sustained relevance lies in its interpretive neutrality. It does not command a singular narrative but invites multiple perspectives. It can stand for joy, sarcasm, dread, nostalgia, or nothing at all. This symbolic ambiguity allows people to project their own emotions onto it, turning it into a visual Rorschach test for cultural and emotional states.
Artists like Rich Browd and DB Burkeman, the creators of The Sm;)e Book, understand this duality intuitively. Their work reframes the smiley not as a fossilized design artifact, but as a mutable cultural lens—one capable of adapting to psychological, aesthetic, and political changes. In their conclusion, they poignantly note, “This image has meant many things to many people. In such a chaotic world, we hope that artists and designers continue to play with and be inspired by the smiley’s legacy.”
This ongoing play with meaning is where the smiley finds its true strength. Whether hand-drawn on cardboard signs at climate protests or reimagined in virtual reality exhibitions, it retains the uncanny ability to feel personal, even when mass-produced. Its appeal lies not just in nostalgia, but in its capacity to represent something universally human: the pursuit of feeling, expression, and identity.
The Smiley’s Future: Constant Rebirth
If one truth emerges from the smiley’s cultural journey, it is that the symbol will never remain static. As long as new artistic mediums emerge, the smiley will be there—shifting, blinking, glitching, or mutating. Already, we are seeing its reemergence in speculative architecture, kinetic installations, and generative design projects.
In the world of fashion, smiley reinventions continue to gain traction. Experimental designers are using it to explore emotional AI, reactive textiles, and wearable communication. Imagine garments that display mood through changing smiley expressions based on biometric data—an idea already being tested in wearable tech labs.
Architectural motifs also incorporate the symbol, using circular patterns and facial designs embedded into modern urban landscapes. In many ways, the smiley is becoming an ambient presence—not just something we see, but something we live within. Augmented reality platforms now let users tag smiley symbols onto city walls or create smiley-based murals with virtual paint. These aren’t nostalgic throwbacks—they’re living projections of future-facing identity.
Even in the realm of glitch aesthetics and data art, the smiley is a perfect candidate for digital corruption and reinterpretation. Artists bend it into distorted loops, pixel tears, and fragmented expressions—commenting on the fractured nature of online reality. This process doesn’t kill the smiley; it makes it more relevant.
As society becomes more reliant on visual language to navigate complex systems and global dialogues, the smiley persists as a cross-cultural shorthand—one capable of adapting to the technological and ideological demands of the future.
From Underground Motif to Museum Artifact
What began as a morale-boosting sketch in a Massachusetts office now hangs in world-renowned galleries, featured not only for its pop-art charm but also its sociopolitical undertones. The smiley has completed its transformation from ephemeral commercial image to lasting museum piece, embraced by the institutions it once subtly mocked.
Its trajectory from subversive sticker on an anarchist’s guitar case to centerpiece in a curated design exhibition is one of the most compelling evolutions in modern visual culture. Institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA, and contemporary design biennials have included smiley-themed installations and retrospectives, often focusing on its dual life as both cultural glue and social solvent.
But the smiley doesn't lose its edge in these sterile environments—it regains historical context. Curators now analyze its presence in political satire, underground zines, anti-globalization protests, and punk iconography, highlighting how this benign face was weaponized in the fight against complacency.
It is a rare example of a symbol that can function both as pop artifact and critical tool—comfortable in the hands of a child or the pages of a theory-laden design journal. This flexibility grants it a unique place in our shared visual memory.
A Mirror to Generational Change
Every generation finds its own meaning in the smiley. For boomers, it might recall postwar optimism or 1970s kitsch. For Gen X, it signifies punk rebellion or acid house ecstasy. Millennials associate it with early internet culture, emoji dialects, or meme aesthetics. Gen Z sees it as a paradox—either sincere or steeped in post-ironic detachment.
This ability to oscillate between tones is rare for any symbol. The smiley remains a visual palimpsest—layered with old meanings but open to new inscriptions. It allows people to express complex emotions in a single glyph, something that written language often struggles to achieve with such efficiency.
Its resilience lies in its refusal to grow old. Instead of fading, it evolves—mirroring society’s moods, fears, hopes, and absurdities. It is both the symptom and the solution, a minimalistic masterpiece of semiotic fluidity.
Final Thoughts:
The smiley face, with its minimalist design and maximal cultural impact, stands as one of the most enduring visual symbols of the last century. It’s remarkable that a simple circle with two dots and a curved line can carry such immense emotional, social, and artistic weight. As The Sm;)e Book makes abundantly clear, the smiley is not just a face—it’s a mirror, a mask, a badge, and sometimes, a battle cry.
Across continents and decades, the smiley has functioned as an icon of hope and rebellion, optimism and critique. It has adorned children's toys, graced fine art exhibitions, inspired graffiti, and rallied dancers on sweat-drenched club floors. It is just as likely to appear on a kindergarten sticker chart as it is to be featured in dystopian graphic novels or political street murals. Its very ubiquity makes it powerful—but its ability to shape-shift in meaning makes it profound.
The smiley’s longevity is not a matter of chance. Its survival and relevance stem from its intrinsic adaptability. Whether embedded in the punk scene of the '70s, the rave explosion of the late '80s, the digital boom of the 2000s, or the meme culture of today, it effortlessly slides into new contexts without losing its essence. It can be commercialized and commodified, yes—but it can also be reclaimed and remixed. That dual nature is why it continues to resonate so deeply with artists, rebels, designers, and dreamers.
In an age of visual overload, where symbols are rapidly diluted or discarded, the smiley remains strangely potent. Perhaps it’s because it captures something universal: the primal act of smiling, the impulse to connect, and the eternal human struggle between sincerity and satire. The Sm;)e Book reminds us that even the simplest symbols can carry centuries of history and infinite interpretations.
Ultimately, the smiley face is not just a design—it’s a dialogue. One that spans time, cultures, and ideologies. And as long as people seek to express joy, question authority, or simply leave a mark, the smiley will continue to evolve—forever familiar, forever new.
