The earliest version of the happy yellow smiley face was designed by Harvey Ball, a freelance designer in Worcester, Massachusetts. Joe Young, the head of promotion for the State Mutual Assurance Company of Massachusetts, made some modifications to the pattern and asked Harvey Ball to design the pattern into a wearable round badge. , hoping to boost the company's employee morale (the company was preparing to merge with other companies at the time, and employee morale was low). According to press records, Ball initially drew just a smiling mouth, but he worried that angry employees might deliberately wear the badge upside down, so he added two more eyes to distinguish the direction of the badge. Finally, add golden yellow as the background, and voila, the happy face was born.

When the Associated Press interviewed Harvey Ball, he recalled: There are two ways to accomplish it (the drawing of a happy smiley face). You can take a compass and a fine eye to draw an exact circle. But you can also have fun drawing freehand, just like I did. Make this smiley face full of personality.

In the interview, Bauer also said that there has never been anything in the history of mankind or art that can make everyone feel the joy and happiness with just such a simple form of expression. Patterns, in the field of art, have never been so simple and easy to understand.

***Tong Life Insurance only produced 100 of these badges at first, but due to the popularity of the smiley face, it was quickly sold out and more smiley face badges were produced. In 1964, John Adams, the insurance company's vice president, wore one of these smiley-face badges in a photo. Ball received a design fee of US$45 for designing the pattern, but neither he nor the insurance company applied for a trademark for the pattern.