The earliest version of the yellow happy smiling face was designed by Harvey Ball, a freelance designer in Worcester, Massachusetts. Joe Young, the promotion director of the State Mutual Assurance Company in Massachusetts, did some retouching on this pattern and asked Harvey Bauer to design the pattern into a wearable circular badge, hoping to inspire the morale of the company's employees (the company was preparing to merge with other companies at that time, and the morale of the employees was low). According to news records, Bauer first painted a smiling mouth, but he was worried that those disgruntled employees might wear the badge upside down on purpose, so he added two eyes to distinguish the direction of the badge, and finally added a golden yellow as the background. Look, a happy face was born.

The picture above shows Harvey Bauer, a happy smiling face designer, creating in his office in 1996. He has worked in Main Street in Worcester for more than 3 years. The bottom picture shows a picture of a happy family on a New Year card in 1984.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Harvey Bauer recalled: There are two ways to do it (drawing a happy smiling face). You can draw an exact circle with a compass and a pair of fine eyes. But you can also draw by hand, which is full of fun, just like what I did. Let this smiling face be full of personality.

In the interview, Bauer also said that in the history of human beings or art, there has never been a pattern that can make everyone feel joy and happiness with such a simple form, and in the field of art, there has never been a work of art that is so simple and easy to understand.

*** Tong Life made only 1 of these badges at the beginning, but because this smiling face was very popular, it was quickly distributed, so more smiling face badges were produced. In 1964, john adams, the vice president of the insurance company, also wore such a smiley face badge in a photo. Bauer got a design fee of $45 for designing this pattern, but neither he nor the insurance company later applied for a registered trademark for this pattern.