Personalized Buttons: Wear Your Heart On Your Lapel

There have been some truly famous buttons in the history of the world. Two that come to mind are the 'Don't Panic' button from Douglas Adam's book 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and the 'I Like Ike' buttons that were handed out in vast quantities during Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 presidential campaign. But those buttons appeared, respectively, on the cover of a book and on the chests of millions of voters. Nothing personal about them. There are some types of buttons that are less ubiquitous and more scarce, such as a small, subtle pin that denotes membership of an exclusive club or some military special forces unit. Yet, they are still not personalized. Shall we call military decorations and medals a sort of button? Even if we do, they're still shared by at least a handful of other people. But what I'm talking about here is something truly unique; something only really made affordable by 21st century technology: personalized buttons.

Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, which came into operation around 1429, had a revolutionary effect. Suddenly, he could print off a few hundred or so copies of Martin Luther's world-changing writings (for better or for worse, depending on where you stand in these matters) in an inconceivably small fraction of the time it would have taken to copy all that material by hand. This was the Internet of the time! But not only could Gutenberg distribute large quantities of homogeneous material - his technology was now also agile enough to print retractions (OK, in Luther's case never retractions) or retorts addressed to specific individuals in a matter of days.

The second Gutenberg revolution has hit us, but this time the general trend moves inward, aimed at a single human being, instead of the shotgun blast in the general direction of the population as fired off from the original Gutenberg press. This now happens faster than ever. At worst, you have to wait a couple of days for the mailman, the White Truck of Happiness, or the Brown Truck of Happiness to bring you a little box containing buttons with your very own name on them, accompanied by the design of your choice, or perhaps even a photograph you selected from the electronic family album.

Your own button can be as exciting as your imagination can make it. Planning to take small kids to a football game attended by tens of thousands of people? Get your child a button that says: 'I belong to Joe Soap and I support the Atlanta Falcons'. Birthday party? To spruce up the atmosphere, every little guest gets a button saying: 'Happy Birthday Joey'. How about a reward button: 'I went to bed at 9 pm last night' - something that might be worn with great pride.

Grownups can have buttons too. You may see this button at a convention in Las Vegas: 'I'm Karen and I belong to the Blue Team.' A button only costs a fraction more than those horrible sticky labels they use to, well, label you with; it doesn't fall off, and it looks so much better.

A button has a certain look and feel to it, especially if it has your name on it, that makes you just happy to wear it. Although it could be eminently useful too, it's simply a fun thing to do. I think I'm getting myself one that proclaims that I, (fill in my name _______), have survived our last family vacation. With a picture of the above-mentioned family in full screaming riot mode.

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