Smiley
In 1963, State Mutual Life Assurance Company was undergoing a stressful transition. A series of difficult mergers and acquisitions had taken place, and morale was low.
In an attempt to restore optimism, State Mutual hired graphic artist Harvey Ross Ball to design an uplifting logo to be distributed throughout the company.
It took Ball less than ten minutes to make history.
His design—later dubbed “Smiley”— consisted of a yellow circle, narrow oval eyes, and a wide grin. State Mutual put it on posters and signs and thousands of buttons. As the joyful image spread, it was replicated by numerous copycat artists. Soon the yellow smile appeared everywhere; “Smiley” had become a cultural phenomenon.
The Peace Symbol
In 1958, British artist Gerald Holtom was in charge of designing a symbol for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC). The design was simple – a circle with three lines inside, representing the flag semaphore letters for N and D (which stand for “nuclear disarmament”).
The design was first introduced on April 4, 1958 at a public DAC march. In Britain, the symbol became synonymous with nuclear disarmament, and in 1960 it was co-opted by the peace movement in the United States. Since then, the symbol has become internationally recognized as the symbol for “peace.”
The British Invasion
On December 10, 1963, 15-year- old Marsha Albert of Maryland saw a CBS news story on “Beatlemania,” the United Kingdom’s love affair with a rising young rock band. Albert wrote to local radio DJ Carroll James, asking why Americans couldn’t get music like this. In response, James brought Albert live on air to introduce “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on December 17. And so the craze spread to the U.S.
In 1964, the Beatles had thirty different listings on the Hot 100. Other U.K. bands, including The Who, The Animals, and The Rolling Stones, became astoundingly popular in the United States as well.
David Wild of Rolling Stone magazine describes the phenomenon thusly: “The Beatles and the British Invasion may be the greatest love story, in a cultural sense, that’s ever been.”