HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY, SMILEY FACE MEDIA!

When did Smiley Face Media start? Apparently it was 7 years ago today.

Thank you to this blog post for never having been deleted, we know with certainty: today is Smiley Face Media’s birthday!

September 28th, 2016 must have been an exciting day. After years of freelancing, working at agencies, and being determined to never give up on art as a business, it had dawned on me that so many of the great movers and shakers are virtually unknown and unidentifyable.

What you know about them is nest to nothing. The name of the companies they’re worked for and the projects they’ve been on.. and heck, most people don’t even know the names of most the companies.

So, Lorry Plasterer was my name, and not my company’s name. So I chose Smiley Face Media. However, it wasn’t going to be much of a company if it was only just me, going by a different name.

Enter: Jordan and Rick! Jordan, my dear friend from home had moved to LA to build custom guitars for Ibanez. In our free time, we made photo shoots. It was truly art for art’s sake and quite enjoyable, yet I was up to my own devices as far as income was concerned and couldn’t just freelance for fun.

Rick joined the party after the launch of my storefront… which is no longer. Another casualty of the pandemic. Writing this, it feels like ancient history even though just four years ago, I would have been bouncing between the computer and customers and phone lines and keeping everything afloat.

The day of our ribbon cutting, we had so much press and it was so packed that I knew I wouldn’t have time to film. I asked Rick to just… handle it. At the time, he was still working on composing with projects at Warner Bros while running operations for several LA hotspots. We had never made any videos together up until that point, aside from a short film that I acted in and he composed the music for.

LA was a grind, no doubt about that. This business is a grind - just a lot more enjoyable living out in the country. Thinking about the idea that it’s been seven years since Smiley Face Media was technically born… is wild.

Cheers to all of us who made it happen,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SMILEY FACE!