Life Is Good

A couple of guys, barely making ends meet, discover a new slogan, and transform it into a new philosophy of life, and market it, and now, for them, life is truly good.

Life is good.

You may disagree, but Life is Good is a registered and trademarked expression by the Life is Good people for whom, life is good.

Perhaps you have seen the emblematic smiling face of Jake on a Life is Good T-shirt or coffee mug or Frisbee. No, not the yellow Smiley plastered on novelty merchandise in the ’70s and later copped by Wal-Mart as the price rollback symbol. The Life is Good logo is a stick figure named Jake who wears a black beret, beatnik sunglasses, and flashes a giant Cheshire cat grin. Jake is often posed in any number of activities that bring simple pleasure to life — hiking, surfing, flying a kite, walking the dog.

Life is Good started inauspiciously as brothers Bert and John Jacobs hawked homemade, novelty T-shirts in the Boston streets and door-to-door through college dorms. They were literally living in their van down by the river. Their silver bullet was fired when they printed 48 shirts of perma-grin Jake over the saying “Life is Good” for a 1994 street...