SmileyWorld to Celebrate 20 Years

The art and design brand is gearing up for its 20th anniversary in 2017.

SmileyWorld, creator of the first digital smiley, is set to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2017. To commemorate, the design and licensing studio plans to create several marketing activations, including a variety of public relations and social media campaigns, retail launches, trade show promotions and limited edition POS for activation.

In addition, SmileyWorld is offering licensees an exclusive anniversary marketing materials kit, which includes free-standing shelving units, countertop displays, shelf talkers, posters and branding wobblers.

During the technological revolution of 1997, Nicolas Loufrani, chief executive officer, Smiley Company, began experimenting with smileys to create faces to correspond to pre-existing emoticons. Alongside his designers in New York, Loufrani created an emotion directory featuring thousands of different smileys.

He then registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1997 and published it on the Internet the following year–these would become the world's first graphical emoticons and lead to the creation of SmileyWorld.

In the two decades since, the smileys have been featured on tens of thousands of products created by more than 800 licensees, and have generated more than $1 billion in retail sales.