The inventors of the canonical smiley, i.e., two eyes and a mouth on a yellow background, the one best rememberd for its part in the ‘acid house’ music scene in the late 80’s early 90’s (there may well be other versions but this is the yellow one with the big wide eyes that we see about most often today), are graphic writer Alan Moore, and artist Dave Gibbons, it was created as the logo for a charictor their classic comic series ‘Watchmen’. This was than used as the cover for Bomb The Bass’s single 'Beat ‘Dis’ and thus became the symbol of the acid house movement.
This being Great Debates and all:
CITE???
Are you writing in response to this?
Wow. Talk about lack of historical memory. Ever heard of the 1960s? “Have a nice day”? A quick google search of “‘have a nice day’ inventor smiley” yields this obituary.
I’ve never heard of this guy before, I have to admit; but the smiley invented for the Watchmen series? That’s like saying Mike Meyers invented the suave secret agent character…
Ah damn. On preview I see someone’s beaten me to it. and in many fewer words. And with a link to a Cecil column, and thus much more authoritatively. Feh.
Sorry Timchik, though if I knew an evil laugh I’d be doing it right now.
Moderator’s Note: Since this thread does appear to be in response to a column by Cecil, I’ll ship it over to the “Comments on Cecil’s Columns” forum.
!!!
Dude! When was the OP born? Good Lord!
Probably thinks “Star Wars” was the first movie serial, too!
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 31-37 of Cecil Adams’ book «The Straight Dope Tells All (1998)».
wow…its so nice to be welcomed to an mb with a barrage of insults cause i got something wrong.
ok i’ve been corrected and i see that…to refine my original point then, it was clearly only the wide eyed version of the smilie that was invented for watchmen, and bacame the acid house symbol.
also, being born in 1984, my memory if the 60’s is somewhat hazey.
fitandhappy - Our posters here are more eager to give valuable (and correct) information than to try to soothe the feelings of new posters. If you’re OK with sarcasm I think you will find this message board to be well worth your time. On the other hand, if you consider the posts above to be a “barrage of insults”, I would recommend you read a few of our threads in the General Questions and Great Debates fora to get a general idea of the usual level of disourse at this board.