Black line drawing of a frowning face made from two dots, a curved mouth line and two dots, with the words 'you decide.' beneath it, on a white background.

Frowning smiley face with 'you decide' text

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows a minimal frowning face built from two solid dots for eyes, a single curved black line for the mouth and two more dots, with the serif words 'you decide.' centred below. The linework is clean and uniform with no shading. It is drawn in black on a plain white background with generous empty space around the motif.

Lettering Smiley face Text Dot Line drawing

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit, the tea is still hot if you're quick. You want the story of the stamp? My grandfather told it to me at this same table, and he never once got to the end without laughing.

Keep reading

Up at the Kessel pass, where the road gives up and becomes a goat track with ambitions, there was a border hut with one window and one officer. His name was Tomas Varga, and he had been posted there so long the snow had started to recognise him. He owned one stamp. Every traveller who came over with the wrong papers, the wrong names, or a cow they could not account for got that stamp: two dark dots for eyes, two more for the mouth, and a single curved line that turned the whole face down. Beneath it, in small serif letters he had cut himself, the words you decide.

Nobody knew what it meant. The ministry in the valley sent a letter asking. Tomas wrote back that the stamp meant exactly what it said. A man would stand at the window with his papers, and Tomas would tap the frown and ask, is that face yours or mine? Most laughed. Some turned around and went back down without crossing. One widow, Ilse Brandt, carried her husband over in a handcart, and when Tomas asked her, she pressed the stamp hard against the lid herself and said, "Mine, and his," and walked on into the wind.

The winter the valley sent a young clerk with a rubber stamp full of smiling faces, Tomas packed his old one in his coat and climbed to the top of the pass. He pressed it into the snow, dots and line and all, and left it there. My grandfather said the snow kept that frown all winter, and every spring it melted a little slower than the rest of the mountain, as if it were still making up its mind.