Smiley Emoji | Street Photography by Frank Daske

About "Smiley Emoji | Street Photography"

by Frank Daske

About the artwork

The smiley emoji is a small picture that shows a smiling face. It is often used to express happiness, contentment or humour. The smiley emoji has its origins in the yellow smiley, which was designed in 1963 by the commercial artist Harvey Ball. It was intended to create a symbol of good humour for an insurance company. The smiley soon became a worldwide phenomenon and appeared on many products and media.

The first digital smiley was an emoticon consisting of punctuation marks. It was proposed in 1982 by computer science professor Scott Fahlman to characterise ironic or funny messages. He wrote: "I suggest that the following string of characters be used for jokes: :-)". Emoticons quickly became popular and developed into different variants and forms.

The first mobile phone smiley emoji was a pictogram consisting of a few pixels. It was created in 1999 by the designer Shigetaka Kurita for the Japanese mobile phone provider NTT Docomo. It was part of a series of 176 emojis that depicted various objects, symbols and emotions. He wanted to simplify and enrich communication on the small screens of mobile phones. Emojis were soon adopted and expanded by other providers and platforms. Today, there are thousands of emojis designed in different colours, shapes and styles. They have become an important part of digital language and culture.

Conceived by Frank Daske, visualized with AI.