(｡❛ᴗ❛｡) Nº221 Iconic but Ironic 🙂 🙃

Hey! Surprise, here’s a Friday edition of the Twotone newsletter!

How are you doing? I’ve been onboarding new colleagues, kicking off new projects, traveling to the USA to see my kids, squeezing in a #12hoursofmay overnighter & even preparations for getting married next month! 🥰

The ways in which May has been wild could be a whole issue on its own, so it’s certainly not ironic this subject line rhyme caught my eye. 🙃

Well, it was inspired by Matthew Jones of Accept & Proceed. He made a pretty relevant (to me) post on LinkedIn about a designer named Harvey Ball. In 1963, Harvey created the design for the ubiquitous Smiley, the forerunner to every single emoji we know today. 🙂

Jones’ post tells this story:

“An insurance company in Massachusetts hired [Harvey] to create a design to boost the morale of their employees. He got paid $45; it was so popular people started printing it themselves and putting it onto anything they could, hats, tees, badges, posters…

Harvey never trademarked the design… and partly because of that, this mark has brought global joy, it’s a shorthand for ‘happy’, and has been adopted by movements and cultures worldwide. It was a symbol of the UK’s acid house scene in my youth.”

Jones’ point? Harvey’s Smiley shows, in our globalised world why design is so important. It cuts through all barriers, all languages, and resonates deep across borders.