UMass Magazine Online

Fall 2004

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Extended Family

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The Future's So Bright

The Prince of Pages

The Changing Face of Beauty

Campaigns: Good for What Ails Us?

Extended Family

It's Hip to Be Happy
Life is good for John Jacobs ’90, creator of a feel-good phenom

–Christopher O'Carroll




	Brothers Bert and John Jacobs, co-founders of Life is good. (photo by Garrick Amos)

WHAT IS IT ABOUT JAKE'S smile? Aglow with robust optimism, somehow energetic and laid-back at the same time, this is one full-tilt boogie of a grin, a beaming salute to the cheerful concept that it’s hip to be happy.

Cartoon mascot of the Life is good company (that’s how they spell it, with just one capital letter), Jake sprang from the pen of company co-founder John Jacobs ’90. Life is good T-shirts and other products now feature the trademark face atop a variety of stick-figure bodies—Jake the cyclist, Jake the skateboarder, Jake holding an ice cream cone. But he started out as simply a disembodied head with the smile, dark glasses, and a beret. Jacobs, who was a combined English and art major, conceived the character as the antithesis of a stereotypical angst-ridden artist.

When Jake first appeared, Jacobs was a few years out of UMass Amherst. He and his brother Bert were making a precarious living hawking their original T-shirt designs out of a van at college campuses and street fairs up and down the East Coast. “There were nights when it would be zero degrees and we’d be freezing in the van, burying ourselves in T-shirts,” he recalls. “But we also had a lot of laughs. Life was good, even when we were sleeping in the van.”

It was that positive outlook, and the smiling character that embodies it, that rescued the brothers when their venture was running on empty. In September of 1994, with a street fair coming up, they invested their last few dollars in four dozen renditions of a new design featuring Jake’s face and the three words “Life is good.”

Accustomed to making typically 20 sales a day, John and Bert were astonished when customers quickly snapped up all 48 Jake shirts. “Before noon, that whole pile was gone,” John says. “We were just blown away.” Over the next few months, the brothers weeded out the other designs and expanded Life is good. “Our first year selling Life is good we did $80,000. And it’s basically doubled in sales every year since then.”

Their multi-million-dollar success has given the brothers the wherewithal to spread more than smiles. “All along we’ve thought, let’s have as much positive impact as we possibly can,” John says. “Now we’re in a position where we can directly affect some people who are less fortunate.” The company has established a philanthropic division that puts Jake’s image to work in fundraising festivals for such causes as Camp Sunshine, which serves the families of children with life-threatening illnesses. Last October, they drew more than 20,000 people to the first annual Life is good Pumpkin Festival in Portland, Maine. (This year the event moves to Boston; see details below.)

Jake’s creator credits the success of the Life is good philanthropic efforts to the smiling mascot and the upbeat company name. “People want to rally around something positive,” he says. “Everyone wants to do good.”

Life is good Pumpkin Festival
Sat. Oct. 23, 2004 • Boston, MA

A good old-fashioned day in the park with family festivities featuring live music, magicians, pie-eating contests, parades, hayrides, fireworks and, of course, pumpkins. Join the attempt to smash the Guinness record for the most lit jack-o-lanterns in one place at one time. All proceeds for this event go to Camp Sunshine, a retreat for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Info: www.lifeisgood.com.

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