Emoticons IRL: Wear Your Mood To Show Others How You Feel

According to Wikipedia, the emoticons we use online are pictorial representations of facial expressions using punctuation marks and letters, which are usually used to express our mood online. I use emoticons every day. Some of the more creative ones make me giggle each time I use them. Since these little buttons that you see below aren’t technically pictures, I suppose they don’t qualify as real emoticons, but I still call them that since they serve the same purpose.

What you see in the pictures below is a huge wall of buttons outside at a busy intersection in Toronto which invites people to share their emotions with others. This wall is covered in mood pins, so people can walk up to the wall and choose the pin that best describes how they feel in that moment and attach it to their clothes for everyone to see. It’s all part of a mental health campaign called Not Myself Today. According to Behance, Blok Design along with the Partners for Mental Health created this board to help encourage people to become more comfortable with talking about their feelings. It’s a way to improve mental health and invite people to be open with others.

Each pin has a word on it which describes a mood. I wish I knew how they chose which emotion to put on which color button. I would be tempted to pick my favorite button based on its color instead of the correct mood. I wonder what those psychologists who came up with this idea would say about that. These aren’t just the standard moods like happy and sad either. There are some really creative ones in the mix. I love this! What a great idea. I wish online emoticons had a little more variety to them like these buttons. Since so much of what we do is online, it would be great to be able to express ourselves in a way that is as simple as wearing a pin but as complex as our feelings.