Smiley

A smiley [ smaɪ̯li ː ] (also often incorrectly Smilie, Smily rare - from English to smile =, smile '; majority smileys or smilies incorrect ) is the graphical representation of a facial expression. A smiley is often used to represent a particular emotion or to clarify them. The term is often used synonymously with emoticon, however, an emoticon is a character -based representation, the smiley but usually a graphical object.

History

The oldest verifiable using the smiley goes back to the American commercial artist Harvey Ball. He drew in December 1963, two points and a curved line in a yellow circle. Balls was commissioned by the insurance company State Mutual Life Assurance Cos.. of America, who wanted to raise with the pins the working atmosphere. Ball received $ 45 for the design. The sign was not legally protected.

1996 reported the French journalist Franklin Loufrani first in France, a design on the stylized smile that today's common variants comes with the oval eyes and changed in comparison to the next ball design proportions. He had invented for his portrayal as loosening of a newspaper article the graphic. Meanwhile Loufrani 's income millionaire and holds rights to use the smiley in over 80 countries. Harvey Ball struggled thereafter to his recognition as the true father of the smileys. Ball founded the World Smile Foundation, which is to propagate the original spirit of smileys. He died on 12 April 2001.

In the late 1980s the music Acid House movement made ​​itself the smiley for identification. During the "Second Summer of Love " is also the drug of ecstasy became popular and made especially in the European media for hysteria, which many department stores for fear of brand damage took all smiley skus.

What became known as Oz graffiti artists Walter Josef Fischer sprayed from 1992 in the streets of Hamburg thousands of smileys. His motivation, he describes it, " to want to make people smile ."

In 2005, Microsoft wanted to protect the conversion of ASCII characters into smileys, which did not succeed.

The German Consumer Protection Minister thinking since 2010 about whether the smileys can also serve as a hygiene seal for restaurants. However, the political polls require their time and the smileys are only an alternative for the visualization.

Electronic form

The original form of electronic Smilies consists of ASCII characters and can be used in all forms of messages, independent of any support for graphics formats. The basic forms :-) for positive feelings and jokes and :-( for negative feelings were proposed on September 19, 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman later computer science professor, who is thus the inventor of the electronic smileys. Interpret these graphics to the left tilted faces at, look happy or sad.

In Unicode since longer exist three characters with the stylized representation of a frowning or smiling face:

2011 more emoticons were introduced in Unicode 6.0, which are encoded in Unicode block U 1 F600 smileys from to U 1 F64F.