Blue text on white background

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Yellow text centered on a red background.

Underground Uplift Unlimited (UUU) was an ephemera shop in the East Village run by Randy Wicker. They created and sold some of the most worn protest buttons of the 60s. 

Black and yellow background with black and yellow text over opposite colored background.

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Black text on light blue background.

The button text is a playful adaptation from the 1999 comedy film Office Space, where the boss, Bill Lumbergh, tells his employees that Friday will be Hawaiian shirt day:

"Oh, and remember: next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."

This button was manufactured by the Busy Beaver Button Co.

Black text on brown "packing wrap" background.

Field Notes is the product of a partnership between Coudal Partners and the Draplin Design Company. Through their notebooks, Field Notes pays homage to the "vanishing subculture of agricultural memo books and ornate pocket ledgers."

This button was manufactured by the Busy Beaver Button Co.

Black text on white background.

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Beige background with green letters

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Hot pink text on purple background.

Underground Uplift Unlimited (UUU) was an ephemera shop in the East Village run by Randy Wicker. They created and sold some of the most worn protest buttons of the 60s. 

Pink background with white lettering and an ecstatic, cross-eyed button with arms.

The image on this item appears to be a smiley button personified with arms outstretched. The classic yellow smiley face is comprised of a yellow circle, two black dots for eyes and a black arc ending in serifs for a mouth. It  was designed in 1963 by commercial artist, Harvey Ross Ball, who was commissioned by The State Mutual Life Insurance Company to create a happy face to raise the morale of their employees. Neither Ball nor the company copyrighted this smiley, so it was continually used by other businesses in their promotions. It is a well-known button and has become a symbol in the button industry.

Creative House Productions Inc. originated in 1964 and was a design and manufacturing company based in Chicago, Illinois. It was responsible for the creation of many promotional comic pins found in gumball machines and Cracker Jack boxes. Creative House eventually created the brand PinMart, which became the first website to sell lapel pins. PinMart eventually outgrew its parent company and bought Creative House in 2008.

Black text on white background.

Since its modern creation in 1896 by Whitehead and Hoag, pin back buttons were used to spread messages, and to attract the attention of others; at times by declaring potentially controversial viewpoints to complete strangers. At the beginning, they were employed for political and ad campaigns for commercial products. Quickly they began to spread into other areas that included grassroot causes, activism, entertainment, music, humorous, ice breakers, self-referential, self-expressive, among other uses, The1960s and 1970s counterculture were a prolific time for protest buttons including the Free Speech Movement, women’s rights, gay rights, sexual freedom, the Vietnam war, etc. Moreover, during the countercultural 60s and 70s, it was created a fresh style of self-referential humor with phrases such as “Don’t you feel like nut reading a button with no message” that expressed a less political and a more personally self-expressive point of view. In the 1980’s and 1990s, buttons allowed users to express snotty humor without saying a word in novelty shops around the country.