If you've been around Bored Panda long enough, you know we have a soft spot for signs.
From Australian artist Michael Pederson to the legendary El Arroyo restaurant, we cover pretty much everyone who knows how to send a message. Or doesn't!
There's a Facebook group called 'The Absurd Sign Project' and, as the name implies, its members are sharing the funniest sign fails they can find.
We're talking brutal spelling mistakes, contradictory statements... you know, the good stuff. So join us and let's take a look at some of the most popular posts on the group.
More info: Facebook
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It’s about power we go hungry we devour..
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Schrödinger's cookies - there is no chance of knowing if there are cookies in it until you open it
My mum gave me a tin of biscuits for Christmas and said "I thought you could keep your sewing things in it!" It's full of needles and spools of thread now.
I’m Danish and once had a summer job at the factory that made those, and they were really proud about what a popular export they were. And I’m not saying anything bad about Danish butter cookies, but I was thinking that surely you guys would be able to bake this kind of thing yourself? I mean are they really ‘send all the way across the atlantic’ good? And then finally this year I started seeing the sewing kit meme and somehow at least this makes a tiny bit more sense 😄
I actually love those cookies! So does my brother. We are addicted to them, but usually only get them around the winter holidays.
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Believe it or not, I found one of these at home, opened it, and it was full of cookies! I was so happy.
Indeed! But you first must remove these annoying butter cookies.
Yes!!! My grandma had all kinds of buttons in one of these tins. She never used the buttons though they were just a collection, some of them were really pretty and unique. She would put a button on a looped string and give it to us to play with, you hold it in both hands spin it and pull your hands apart and watch the button spin and slide when you tip the string(if that makes sense, hard to explain in text lol). I miss those days, simpler times and simpler amusement 🥰.
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Theses aren't cookie boxes, they are sewing tins and the cookies are just a bonus
I have my embroidery floss, scissors and current itty bitty project in one of these RIGHT NOW! lol
I get a tin a week for $2.99 from Aldi. A couple of biscuits for elevenses. A couple at 3 o'clock cuppa. Next thing you know they're gone. Anyway, if anyone needs 50 empty tins....
You know, I don't ever remember seeing those things with cookies in them? We had a lot, but yes, they were storage bins for nonsense.
I recently was given a small pin of this tin, and inside is a picture of a sewing kit. Really cute.
Omg, I for real use that exact same tin for my little seeing it; thread, needles, pins etc.
Uh, I don’t know, but back in the day there were some who kept their weed and paraphernalia in those tins… I uh read that somewhere.
My mom had one of these. It stood on the desk for 5 months. One day, I opened it, to try and get a sewing needle that I knew my mom had. I opened it to find analmost full tin of kind of stale cookies
Dunk 'em in coffee! A stale cookie is better than NO cookie!
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For those Mac Gyver moments where you need to repair a cookie in secret.
It's not a crime! Newsflash. Some funny videos are STAGED!
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You obviously don't have a circular sewing kit. You wouldn't feel the need to explain that if you did.
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This reminds me of the Crown Royal velvet bag. We had a couple for toys, and it took me about 25 years to learn that it used to hold alcohol 😄
We contacted the group's administrators and moderators and one of them, Craig Hey, was kind enough to tell us more about this amusing corner of the internet.
"The community is fantastic," Craig told Bored Panda.
The gang is approaching 100,000 members but the predecessor of 'The Absurd Sign Project' had 166,000 before Facebook decided to ban it.
However, when it comes to content, numbers aren't the most important thing.
From time to time, bigger Facebook groups attract toxic users who want to litter all over them but Craig said they don't have this problem.
"Sometimes we have to take down a post we think Facebook won't like, but we don't get too many trolls. We have a dedicated admin and mod team who love seeing the group thrive and grow. Our most common issue is people not being happy over the posts we have to take down so we don't get shut down."
As you can see, the signs that get featured on the group come from a variety of places but there are a few leaders.
"The biggest provider of entertainment, I would say, are restaurants and supermarkets," Craig said.
The representative of 'The Absurd Sign Project' thinks the main reason why there are so many funny signs isn't incompetence. Rather, it's our desire to make each other laugh.
"We are the biggest absurd sign group I've found and we are the original group," Craig added.
"If anyone has any absurd signs of their own and wants to share, we would love to keep growing as a community and we want to see them!"
If you also have to make a sign, whether it's for your kid's lemonade stand or a business of your own, it might be worth remembering a chat in our earlier piece on funny and clever signs with Adrian Geach.
Geach, who has been a signwriter since 1980, told Bored Panda that "a good sign should be eye-catching, easy to understand and not too wordy with enough negative space around the text or logo, and have a good color scheme."
Stay in drugs, eat school, and don't do vegetables. Sounds reasonable to me....
And then the man went wee wee wee wee wee, all the way home 😉
Geach has been successfully involved in all areas of signage and graphics for decades but not that long ago, he went back to his roots and now concentrates on traditional signwriting.
With the current resurgence of interest in signwriting and hand-rendered work, he utilizes his skills to offer clients a more personal, unique, environmentally friendly, and organic signage solution using old-fashioned materials and techniques.
"A sign might only be looked at for a few seconds so it needs to leave an impression within this time frame, hence the less is more approach," he said.
Where else am I supposed to do my competitive dog grooming? In the elevator!?
"There are many factors to take into account when designing a sign, but the most important thing is to make sure it doesn't get lost in its surroundings," Geach revealed.
"A bad sign is too much lettering, not enough space around or in-between text and logos, and bad color choices."
But after seeing a few more posts on 'The Absurd Sign Project', we'll become experts on those by ourselves!
Watch someone take the table and leave all the rest of the stuff on the ground, untouched.
I love EVERYTHING about this. Especially the voodoo dolls being made while you wait 😂
The fact that they probably had to write the sign based on some persons actions is unreal
For those of you not familiar, Rocky Mountain Oysters are bull testicles...
The missing closing quotation marks is what bugs me the most about this...
This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen/read in my whole life without a doubt
Note: this post originally had 107 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Quite a few of these pictures would also qualify for "You only had one job" kind of list.
But it's so FUN to down vote them into oblivion!
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why is always the place to find job offers? and why are they always spam?
I once went to this great Amish restaurant called 'Old Buggy Buffet ' Imagine what I thought when I first saw that on their sign.
Nope, you just drew more attention to it. Downvote and move on, don't do this c**p
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Quite a few of these pictures would also qualify for "You only had one job" kind of list.
But it's so FUN to down vote them into oblivion!
Load More Replies... why is always the place to find job offers? and why are they always spam?
I once went to this great Amish restaurant called 'Old Buggy Buffet ' Imagine what I thought when I first saw that on their sign.
Nope, you just drew more attention to it. Downvote and move on, don't do this c**p
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