Being the True and Full Account of the Birth of the Happy Face

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In this reminiscence, David Stern, the designer of the ubiquitous yellow Happy Face, gives a true account of its birth, which took place in the University District of Seattle in 1966.

The Story of the Happy Face

It was 1966. I had a small ad agency. One of my clients, University Federal Savings & Loan Association, had a single office in the University District. Another client was the University Bookstore. I also did some work for an organization called UDPA (University Districting Parking Association). Almost overnight, the District was transformed from a college community into a headquarters for anti-Vietnam-War protesters, "street people," and LSD and marijuana users. The combination discouraged people who normally did business there from coming. At night, people slept in the merchant's doorways, defecated in streets and alleys, and turned the place into a garbage dump. I diagnosed the District as "clinically depressed." My clients were suffering.

One day I got a call from a friend of mine, a newsman on KIXI Radio. His sister had been reported by her parents as a "missing person." He was on the streets at night trying to find her. I went with him for the 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift. We walked the streets of the U District. I was appalled. The next night, we took along the Executive Vice President of University Federal Savings, Don Lockwood. He shared my concerns.

That weekend my wife Margaret and I went to a Broadway Musical called Bye Bye Birdie. I was inspired and cheered by the wonderful and positive lyrics of a song called "Put On A Happy Face": "Gray skies are going to clear up, put on a happy face; wipe off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face; spread sunshine all over the place - and put on a happy face."

Those lyrics kept going around in my mind like a phonograph record. Sometime after midnight the lyrics woke me and, using all of the art skills I could, I commited the lyrics to paper. When I got to the office the next morning, I shared my visual with my art director, George Tanagi, and asked him to give it a little "facelift" and a bigger grin and put it on a lapel button, black eyes and mouth on a deep yellow background. I pinned the button on my shirt and for the next four or five days, walked the U District. My "market test" went well. Nearly everybody with whom I came in contact asked me where I got the little button.

I did an ad layout. The happy face on top, and a headline reading: "Open a Savings Account at University Federal Savings and Put on a Happy Face." I called a guy named "The Buttonman" in New York City and placed an order for 25,000 happy face buttons. I'd send the artwork and confirm the order within a week. Still wearing the button, I met with Don Lockwood. After about 10 minutes of discussion he asked me where I got the button. "Do you like it?" I asked. He said yes. "I'm glad," I said. "I ordered 25,000 of them and you're going to get the bill." "How does this get University Federal Savings new accounts?" he asked.

A reasonable question. I pulled out the ad layout and handed it to him. A month later we broke the campaign in Don Duncan's column in The Seattle Times and in an article in the University Herald. People came to University Federal Savings in large numbers and scooped up hands-full of happy face buttons. A lot of them opened savings accounts. Many were employees of Safeco, the giant national insurance company with the tallest building in the University District, just across 45th Street NE from the little savings and loan association which had assets of $35 million. When the next Safeco Annual Report was published, there was a large photo of the happy face inside. Goliath had stolen the happy face from David.

With Don Lockwood's blessing I made an appointment with Gordon Sweaney, then Safeco's CEO. His marketing director came along. They maintained that the happy face was fair game. I had followed all of the rules required to protect the symbol for my client - first use in publication and mailing the artwork with my ad agency's copyright stamp on it across state lines - to The Buttonman in New York City. But University Federal Savings had an insurance department and was a licensed agent for Safeco.

Meanwhile, back at the bank, the containers were being depleted. It was time to reorder. Best of all, at University Federal Savings, dollars were flowing in. Many of the new account holders were foreign students and University of Washington faculty members from Asia and Europe, who were sending buttons to family and friends back home. The happy face had been spread around the country by Safeco and around the world by customers.

Over the years since 1967 I have been characterized in publications as "the guy who was smart enough to invent the happy face and stupid enough not to trademark it." I've been on the receiving end of telephone calls asking for comments on topics ranging from claims of others to be the legitimate "father of the happy face" to the adoption of the happy face as a symbol for the drug counterculture in Great Britain to the opening of the Happy Face Boutique at Bloomingdale's in New York to Forrest Gump's drawing of the happy face in the sand. Most recently, a newspaper reporter contacted me for a comment on a story about a Frenchman named Loufrani who had filed applications to copyright the happy face in America.

In the early 1980s when one of the stories descibing me as the inventor of the happy face was published, I received an irate phone call from a man in Maine who told me he had painted a happy face on the side of a P-38 he piloted in World War II. I apologized for the article and told him I would be sending him a check for 50 percent of every penny I had been paid for his creation.

He lightened up. "How much have you earned?" he asked. "Not a dime," I responded. There was a pregnant pause. "Let me tell you a little story," I said. The story went something like this: In 1967, a few months after we kicked off the advertising campaign for which I drew a happy face, I received a telephone call from a nurse at Seattle's Swedish Hospital. She told me about a 23 year old cancer patient there. She said the woman was terribly depressed and wondered if she could get a happy face button to pin on her hospital gown. "How many patients do you have in the cancer ward?" I asked. "And how many nurses?" The next day I delivered 30 buttons. Two weeks later I got another call from the nurse. "Mr. Stern," she said, "I just want you to know what happened with your buttons. I pinned one on her and a few days later she was giving therapy to all the other patients. They nick-named her 'The Sunshine Lady.' Her prognosis isn't very good, but she's a new person and she's giving everybody else hope and encouragement."

Every once-in-a-while my two daughters make some kind of funny comment about how big their inheritance would have been if only ... I tell them if only ... I probably would have spent the past 33 years in courtrooms defending my copyright and I wouldn't have enjoyed hundreds of soccer games; I might have missed a ballet recital, even a graduation in Washington, D.C. or Southern California.

Sure, I see the smiley face everywhere I go. I still pass out a few buttons now and then - although my 86-year-old mother-in-law claims to have national distribution rights.

This year, I wrote a 55 page letter, protesting the 26 copyright applications filed by the Frenchman. Fifteen were turned down, 11 were granted. I don't know what that means, but I haven't had time the past six months to do any more research on the subject.

I'm just sitting here at the computer, waiting for the inheritance I plan to receive from my children and putting on a happy face.

Sources:
Personal reminiscence.

By David Stern, November 16, 2000

People's Histories include memoirs, reminiscences, contemporary accounts, commentaries, and expressions of personal opinion, many of which have been submitted by our visitors. Unless noted otherwise, these essays have not been verified by HistoryLink.org and do not necessarily represent its views.

Celebrated here in a 1999 stamp, the Happy Face symbol was created 33 years earlier by Seattle ad executive David Stern