The commission Harvey Ball took in 1963 was small: a cheerful mark for an insurance company’s staff buttons. The face he drew has since appeared on countless products. The design is usually described as a yellow disc with two dark oval eyes and a curved mouth, drawn by hand in minutes. For anyone who designs icons, mascots or campaign graphics, Harvey Ball’s smiley is a useful study in brief, scale, reduction and ownership.
A note on images: Harvey Ball died in 2001, and none of the collection databases of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art lists a public-domain work by him, so this guide describes the design in text only and uses a title card. The smiley name and some smiley designs are registered trademarks of other companies in many countries; this guide is editorial and has no affiliation with any of them. For public-domain prints and posters cleared for reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Harvey Ball?
Harvey Ross Ball was born on 10 July 1921 in Worcester, Massachusetts, according to the World Smile Foundation’s biography of him, and spent his working life in the city. The obituary notice published by Rice Funeral Home describes him as a World War II veteran and a commercial artist, and his New York Times obituary by William H. Honan, published on 14 April 2001, called him an advertising executive credited with the smiley face.
He worked in local advertising after the war and later ran his own small agency in Worcester. The smiley was a client job, not a gallery piece.
Harvey Ball died in Worcester on 12 April 2001, aged 79, as reported by the Rice Funeral Home notice and by UPI the following day.
The 1963 commission
The brief came from the State Mutual Life Assurance Company of America, a Worcester insurer. Accounts collected by Smithsonian magazine and the New England Historical Society describe a company dealing with low staff morale after a merger, and a marketing campaign meant to encourage employees to smile, including at customers. The company wanted an image small enough for a pin-back button.
Harvey Ball’s fee is an often repeated detail of the story. UPI’s 2001 report and the New York Times obituary both put it at 45 dollars, and several accounts say the drawing took about ten minutes.
For designers the commission has a familiar shape. The client knew the medium (a round button), the audience (its own staff), and the message (be cheerful). The constraints did much of the design work: a round badge practically asks for a round face, and a badge seen across a desk needs only a few bold marks.
What to look at in the Harvey Ball smiley
Describing the design in words makes its economy obvious. There are four elements: a yellow circle, two eyes, a mouth and the edge of the disc.
- The circle. The face is the whole disc, edge to edge. On a button the outline of the face and the outline of the object are the same, so the image fills its format with no wasted margin.
- The eyes. They are usually described as two narrow upright ovals rather than perfect dots. Upright ovals read as open, alert eyes; the vertical stress also balances the horizontal sweep of the mouth.
- The mouth. A single curved stroke, set low in the disc. Descriptions of the classic version, such as the Busy Beaver Button Museum’s catalogue, note small creases at each end of the arc, rather like serifs. Those end marks pull the corners of the mouth up into cheeks and stop the curve reading as a plain line.
- The colour. Bright yellow under black marks gives high contrast at a glance and a warm, sunny association. Without a public-domain scan to measure, this guide does not quote hex values.
The proportions do the emotional work. In most reproductions, eyes set high and close together, with a wide mouth below, give the face a broad, open grin. Moving any element a little changes the expression.
Hand-drawn, not geometric
The most useful detail for designers is that Harvey Ball’s version is not perfectly regular. Smithsonian magazine’s coverage quotes Worcester Historical Museum staff on how to tell his drawing from later imitations, and secondary summaries of that account list the tells: oval eyes that are not quite the same size, and a mouth that is not perfectly centred.
That small irregularity matters. A face built with compass and ruler can look mechanical; a slight imbalance reads as human. It is the same principle behind many logos that keep a trace of the hand inside an otherwise simple form, a theme our guide to Paul Rand’s logos and reductions explores from the corporate side.
Ownership, trademarks and the later smiley business
Neither Harvey Ball nor State Mutual registered the design as a trademark or sought copyright protection, according to Smithsonian magazine and the New England Historical Society.
In France, the journalist Franklin Loufrani registered a smiley as a trademark in the early 1970s and used it in France-Soir to flag good-news stories; sources give October 1971 for the registration and 1 January 1972 for the newspaper’s first use. Nicolas Loufrani, who later ran the business that grew from that registration, The Smiley Company, has argued that so simple a face cannot be credited to any one person, as Smithsonian magazine reports. Other claimants exist, and the wider history is contested. What is well documented is the Worcester commission of 1963 and the credit widely given to Harvey Ball for it.
The lesson for working designers is practical rather than legal: agree in writing who owns a mark, and what happens if it becomes popular, before it is handed over. His story is a reminder of how far a small piece of work can travel once it leaves the studio. For licensing questions about type and images, see our font licensing guide; for anything else, ask a qualified adviser.
World Smile Day and the Worcester legacy
Later in life Harvey Ball used the attention the smiley brought to promote kindness. He started World Smile Day in 1999, held on the first Friday of October, and the World Smile Foundation, set up in his name, still sponsors it, according to the foundation and to reports by Boston 25 News and Spectrum News. The day encourages small acts of kindness.
Worcester has kept the connection. The Worcester Historical Museum mounted its first smiley exhibition in 1996 with Harvey Ball’s help, according to the museum’s own account reported by History News Network, and staged “Smiley – An American Icon” from October 2006 to February 2007. Spectrum News reported in 2025 that the museum still gives the smiley’s history a dedicated display.
How designers can borrow the ideas
Borrow the method, not the face: smiley trademarks are held by other companies in many countries, so avoid close copies for products or brands.
- Design for the smallest use first. Harvey Ball drew for a button. Sketch your icon or mascot at the size of a favicon, a badge or a sticker before you scale it up.
- Count the elements. Ask how few marks the idea needs. If a face reads with two eyes and a mouth, a nose is decoration.
- Let the format be the shape. Where the object is round, square or tall, consider making the image fill it completely, as the smiley fills the button.
- Keep a trace of the hand. A slightly unequal pair of eyes or a curve that is not perfectly centred can make a simple mark feel warmer. Decide on the irregularity deliberately and keep it consistent.
- Use high-contrast colour. Black on a saturated warm ground reads quickly in print and on screen. Test the pair in greyscale; our poster design principles cover contrast at distance.
Harvey Ball’s face also sits in a wider moment. Flat, bold commercial graphics fed the Pop art of the 1960s, and our guide to Roy Lichtenstein shows a painter taking that vocabulary of thick outlines and flat colour into the gallery. Compare Keith Haring, whose pictograms work on the same principle: a few marks, repeated until they are recognised everywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Did Harvey Ball invent the smiley face?
He is widely credited with the yellow smiley face drawn in 1963 for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts. Smiling circles existed before, and other people later registered or sold their own versions, so the wider history of the symbol is contested.
How much was Harvey Ball paid for the smiley face?
UPI and the New York Times reported a fee of 45 dollars in their 2001 coverage of his death, and accounts say the drawing took about ten minutes.
Did Harvey Ball trademark the smiley face?
No. According to Smithsonian magazine and the New England Historical Society, neither he nor State Mutual registered a trademark or copyright. Other companies have since registered smiley trademarks in many countries.
What is World Smile Day?
It is a day Harvey Ball started in 1999, held on the first Friday of October, that encourages acts of kindness. The World Smile Foundation, set up in his name, sponsors it.
