The Smile We Invented
It happens in an instant.
Someone points it out — and the logo changes forever.
That second “C” in Cola stops being a curve of ink and becomes something else: a smile. Once seen, it can’t be unseen. The letter seems warmer, more human, as if the bottle itself were glad to meet you.
Was it deliberate design or the mind’s desire to find friendliness in the familiar?
A History Without Intention
The script was drawn in the 1880s by Frank Mason Robinson, a bookkeeper who gave the name Coca-Cola its flowing Spencerian grace. There’s no surviving memo, no sketch marked “add a smile.” Everything points to ornament — not emotion.
And yet, somehow, we see joy in the sweep of a pen. What began as decoration has become affection.
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