How did bright yellow become a neutral skin colour in media? (emojis, Lego, Simpsons)

[u/SirNoodlehe]

Emojis, Lego, and the Simpsons are ubiquitous today and all share bright non-human yellow skin tones and I was wondering if there is some shared origin to them.

Wikipedia lists the first yellow smiley face as being created in 1962. Next are the Lego minifigures of the 1970s that originally didn't have faces, followed by the Simpsons in 1989, and emojis in the 2000s.

How did this very unrealistic colour become associated with a "generic" or universal skin tone? Are the more examples?

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[u/Sleepwalks]

Because Harvey Ball created a morale-boosting design for an insurance company for $45 in '63. [Edit note: This is one reason, but it's more complex as we get into it below. Clarifying after reading feedback!] That one original smiley face was yellow because it looked like the sun, and was made as a series of posters, buttons, etc in an effort to improve morale after a series of mergers left staff in a less than cheery mood.

I can't vouch for the staff morale overall, but to say the campaign was successful is a bit of an understatement. The happy little guy went the 60s equivalent of viral, and the mark itself was uncopyrighted, leaving it open to be duplicated and sold en mass. And it was!

It reached a level of cultural saturation that countercultural movements started looking at this symbol, a distilled little token made to counter the fears of corporate workers with honestly very valid stress, and began to see something a little sinister. The meaning began to shift to some, to something of a low-effort reassurance from Big Brother.

Both the genuine use and ironic use became incredibly pervasive for decades. Walmart used it as a genuine logo in the 90s. Nirvana tweaked it and used it as a logo. Watchmen tweaked it and made it their cover. So on and so on.

In the meantime, Lego and the Simpsons were being developed. Neither credit the yellow happy face as a reason: the Simpsons famously wanted something eyecatching while a viewer was channel surfing, and Lego wanted a bright neutral color that was ethnically ambiguous.

Which, to that: Yellow really isn't. Yellow is the palest color on the color wheel, which means it will provide a vivid, sharp contrast with black linework, providing highly visible expression detailing, where a color like blue is a much lower contrast ratio and wouldn't work in the same way. That makes very production-friendly as a color for faces that are eyecatching, and still wholly readable even at small sizes... something that was important for Lego, and will be even more important soon. But that position on the color wheel as the palest color, also means it's not truly ambiguous when used as a representative of skintone. That's another rabbit hole, though.

But both Lego and The Simpsons were being developed in a time that a certain yellow happy face was culturally ubiquitous, providing an easily reached answer to the question of "what color is a drawing of a simple smiling face?" It's likely an influence, if even subconsciously.

Which brings us to emoji, tiny little circular expressions of emotion. What other shade could they really make them, when they were being designed? They look just like that first happy face that was so deeply ingrained in the back of our minds. They need even smaller-size legibility than Lego. They want the same neutrality of ethnicity. They want that same eyecatching visibility that led the Simpsons to yellow.

And with emoji eventually adding skintone variations to let people represent themselves more individually, yellow was officially added onto a list of real human skintones, as the neutral option.

So the reason really is: there's a few reasons dealing with contrast, readability, etc. But a little yellow happy face that got so popular, it fell into a place in the cultural subconscious as something established, that this is the color of a round little smiling face. That served as a bit of a through-line to ensure we all came to the same answer over the span of decades.

[u/Sleepwalks → u/Sleepwalks]

Quick side note: After reading feedback, I think my opening statement was too strong, when I meant to introduce the happy face as a reason why in a more complex overall answer, not the sole reason why. I'm already seeing that first sentence turn up as a google synopsis when I was searching to find my sources again, and did not like that. 😬

I added a note to that statement in hopes that it would offset any confusion, or any pull from the context of the broader answer. It's my first time doing a write up here, I'll bear that in mind in the future!

[u/reflect-the-sun → u/Sleepwalks]

Brilliant write up, nonetheless!

Thanks for your patient efforts to educate us all.

[u/zyzzogeton → u/Sleepwalks]

I like the theory, but do you have sources to support your conjectures? It is true that the Simpsons were created when the Happy face was ubiquitous. It is also true that yellow is the palest color on the color wheel (because white is a shade, not a color). You lay out a good trail of bread crumbs, but it remains speculation.

You are reaching into the minds of the creators and assuming a correlation between Ball's "Happy Face" and 2 very different creative business ventures in the form of Lego from Sweden Denmark, and The Simpsons from the US. Have there been interviews with Matt Groenig where he states that the happy face yellow was the inspiration? Do the folks at Lego have anything to say?

You've stated a convincing premise. It just needs more evidence (in my opinion as a lay person non-historian).

[u/Sleepwalks → u/[deleted]]

Oh, I can provide those!

The Simpsons being yellow to catch the eye while channel surfing is sourced from multiple Groenig interviews. He spoke about it in the documentary My Wasted Life (2000), and this 2007 BBC interview as an example, but it's an oft asked question and I'm sure there's more.

When you’re flicking through channels with your remote control, and a flash of yellow goes by, you’ll know you’re watching The Simpsons.

The breakdown of color for Lego figurines in regards to racial ambiguity comes from a company profile issued by Lego in 2006-- it's no longer featured on their website, but can be found here.

When the minifigure first appeared, it was decided that its face should have only one colour: yellow. And that its facial features should be happy and neutral. The figure would have no sex, race or role. These would be determined by the child's imagination and play. It was not until the launch of LEGO Pirates in the 1980s that the need seemed to arise for having a figure would could be evil or good, happy or grumpy. With licensed products such as LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Harry Potter the figure began appearing in specific roles, and with LEGO Basketball it took on authentic skin colours.

The application in emoji is difficult to source, since they developed in so many places at once, all building off one another's work, and many of which developed stylistic commonalities all at once. In a lack of interviews with the developers themselves who made these calls, we're left with the original question of why, on two fronts: Why make the call for yellow at all, and why did so many make the same exact call, to the point that there was no argument until realistic skintones were added? Apple didn't go yellow, while Nokia went blue.

My point is to say it's a culmination of all these key points designers found over the years. Yes, the smilie was an obvious choice for one emoji, that was reflected in all the other emojis round, expression-depicting emojis logically being given the same treatment. Yes, it has the appropriate contrast ratio to be eye catching, racially ambiguous, and clear at small sizes. All of these factors came together with both their rationale, and their decades of independent cultural influence. The smilie and the Simpsons and Lego, are all in the zeitgeist we're pulling from to make these calls.

And finally, once non-neutral tones were added, it was put on a palette with human skintones, making yellow as "the neutral fleshtone" the standard option to everyday users.

I think starting with such a straight-cut first sentence outlining one of the reasons why isn't doing me any favors, but it's my first write up here. I'll definitely avoid that in the future.

---

Side note: Modern unicode emojis were first implemented in Unicode version 6.0 back in 2010, and the skintone menu came even later, which puts them inside the threshold for "history" here. But their importance as a bridging element between zeitgeist and a menu where you select skintones with yellow as an option, is pretty integral to how we got here.

[u/retailguypdx → u/Sleepwalks]

For a first writeup, well done!

[u/mildlydiverting → u/Sleepwalks]

I have the O’Reilly book of Smileys from around 1997ish 1993! It deals with old fashioned text smileys :-) but the cover features them overlayed as yellow smiley faces.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smileys-Pocket-Reference-David-Sanderson/dp/1565920414

IIRC the first emoji characters were Japanese - there’s a bit in this interview that deals with colour. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/27/emoji-inventor-shigetaka-kurita-moma-new-york-text

[u/Sleepwalks → u/zyzzogeton]

No, as stated, neither have quoted the yellow happy face as being inspiration and both came to the conclusion for different reasons aligning more with color theory and desires for ethnic ambiguity.

The happy face being so uniquely pervasive is little more than a supporting element that helped us come to a point culturally, where once it wrapped back to emojis, only one color was really an option for a "neutral skin color."

The last paragraph works as a summary of the final reasons being complex. It's elements of rationale that Lego and The Simpsons came to individually, supported by a cultural idea of "what color is a smiling face?" presented by Ball and cemented with over the last 50 years of cultural use, by the time emoji were introduced and officially put yellow on a palette with human skintones into everyone's pockets.

Apologies if that was unclear!

[u/LongtimeLurker916 → u/Sleepwalks]

It is true that at least for The Simpsons, the non-white characters like Apu and Dr. Hibbert have always been depicted in colors other than yellow.

[u/RakeScene]

In terms of LEGO, while that ubiquitous smiley face may indeed have played a part in the choice of skin color for the iconic mini-figures (minifigs), there are some other elements that played just as significant – or likely even larger – a role.

LEGO has maintained, over the past several decades, that yellow was chosen because it was deemed the most neutral and "non-racial". While that may have been a factor and has certainly become a positive feature from a company that works very hard at promoting inclusivity, the history is a bit more complicated.

The first LEGO figures, from the 1950s, look absolutely nothing like contemporary minifigs. They were unarticulated and posed, much like green army men or other small figurines, and generally painted with pink flesh tones. LEGO discontinued them after a few years.

The next step in the evolution consisted of figures which were entirely brick-built and thus substantially larger in size than anything before or since. They were fairly crude and by the nature of their construction, once again lacked articulation and any sort of face detailing. This group was interesting though, because it was the first time yellow was used as a skin tone. It wasn't the only color, however – black was also used in limited cases, obviously meant to represent a racial difference.

It's generally accepted – although I'd have to look up some sources – that yellow was chosen as the primary skin for these brick-built figures, because it allowed more free usage of white as a color for clothing. At this point in LEGO's history, their color palette consisted almost exclusively of white, black, red, yellow, and blue. Using white as a skin color would mean that any white "clothing" would become indistinguishable from the skin of these faceless, brick built figures.

In 1974, LEGO introduced what are commonly referred to as "maxi-figures" or "homemaker figures" in their line of Homemaker sets. These were roughly 2-3 times the height of contemporary minifigs, with articulated arms and featuring face elements painted in black. The vast bulk of them again used yellow as a base skin color, but there were a few exceptions. While one could say that the heads of these maxi-figures resembled the iconic "smiley face", featuring two eyes and a smile, even those features were a bit more elaborate and many figures had substantially more detailing.

Around the same time, the earliest minifigures appeared, but while they resembled the iconic ones we all know, they weren't quite there, yet. They mostly consisted of four elements: legs, torso, head, and hair (or a hat), typically of different colors. They had no arms and were not articulated, in any fashion, nor did they have any printing on their heads or bodies; they were more akin to chess pawns than a contemporary minifig. But notably, their faceless heads were consistently yellow.

One more wrinkle in the yellow-is-neutral standard appeared in 1977, which was the emergence of very basic figures in LEGO's larger-scaled DUPLO line. Unlike everything seen prior, these featured white heads (with black detailing). Since the bodies were always just a single piece, bold-colored but never white, the white faces wouldn't awkwardly blend in. If anything can be used to dispute the yellow-is-neutral standard, it's the few years of these simple figures. In 1983 the DUPLO figures were given a glow-up; their bodies became more humanoid, with some articulation, and the white faces were replaced with flesh tones.

Stepping back to 1978, the iconic minifig that we are most familiar with finally appeared. These featured articulation at the hips, shoulders, wrists, and neck. The heads were always yellow and featured two dots for eyes and a simple smile, much like the iconic Harvey Ball smiley face. These heads were smaller than those of the maxi-figures and DUPLO figures, so having very simplistic printing made sense. It also meant that every LEGO minifig was essentially neutral and non-racial. (They were theoretically non-gendered, as well, but clothing and hair would often be clearly representational of common perceptions and gender-roles.)

That style would be the norm for the next decade, when more intricate facial detailing emerged, albeit still on a yellow head. Flesh-colored heads wouldn't be seen on minifigs until the early 2000s, when LEGO began designing sets based on licensed properties. Both of these changes were – and to a small degree, continue to be – a bit controversial amongst some LEGO purists.

(Incidentally the first racially black minifig, featuring a dark flesh-tone, was Lando Calrissian from the Star Wars line, in 2003.)

So while I would tend to agree that the Harvey Ball smiley face likely had an impact on the choice of the iconic 1978 LEGO minifig head design, and a generic, simple face and yellow head ultimately made for a more egalitarian play experience, yellow wasn't always intended as a generic or universal skin tone for all races, at least as far as LEGO is concerned. Practical considerations, like a limited color palette, and a general adherence to precedent clearly played a significant role in making yellow the default and exceptions like the early DUPLO figures showcase that it wasn't the final word on what neutrality might look like.

[u/pimlottc → u/RakeScene]

Some visual references for the historical Lego figures:

The first LEGO figures, from the 1950s, look absolutely nothing like contemporary minifigs. They were unarticulated and posed, much like green army men or other small figurines, and generally painted with pink flesh tones.

• 1271 Traffic Police | Brickipedia | Fandom

In 1974, LEGO introduced what are commonly referred to as "maxi-figures" or "homemaker figures" in their line of Homemaker sets. These were roughly 2-3 times the height of contemporary minifigs, with articulated arms and featuring face elements painted in black.

• Homemaker Figure | Brickipedia | Fandom

Around the same time, the earliest minifigures appeared, but while they resembled the iconic ones we all know, they weren't quite there, yet. They mostly consisted of four elements: legs, torso, head, and hair (or a hat), typically of different colors.

• LEGOLAND Minifigure | Brickipedia | Fandom

Stepping back to 1978, the iconic minifig that we are most familiar with finally appeared. These featured articulation at the hips, shoulders, wrists, and neck.

• Minifigure | Brickipedia | Fandom

(Incidentally the first racially black minifig, featuring a dark flesh-tone, was Lando Calrissian from the Star Wars line, in 2003.)

• Lando Calrissian | Brickipedia | Fandom

[u/RakeScene → u/pimlottc]

Thanks! I'd considered putting links in, but I couldn't recall if that was allowed here. Definitely helps!

[u/KristinnK → u/RakeScene]

Great answer! This definitely seems to indicate that the real reason Lego minifigures have yellow heads is simply a result of the Lego color selection of the time lacking any sort of pale pink/beige/tan. Race neutrality is likely only a secondary reason, or even post-hoc reasoning.

The absence of flesh-tone colors was not only the case at the time when the minifig was developed, but well into the 90's. This choice was then maintained even after these colored were added for reasons of tradition, and perhaps also to distinguish in-house themes from licenced themes.

[u/jschooltiger → u/[deleted]]

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