As the internet is vast, it should come as no surprise that there’s more than one community that’s all about Funny Signs.
The page was created in mid 2022—so it’s a bit over a year old—and in that time, it has managed to gather a modest following of 2,250 people.
The page inevitably proves that there is no end to funny signage, or predicaments in which signage becomes funny. And anything goes, really.
Having a yard sale and need some unique advertising? Let Mike Tyson help you out. Want to reinforce a superstition in an area that’s probably notorious for it? Make it absolutely clear with a warning sign. Wanna take a jab at doctors? Say no more, fam. The list goes on, but you probably get the point at this point.
Most of us likely don’t think much of signs. They’re there. They give us info. That’s about it. Well, there’s an entire science behind them. From the colors to the forms to the imagery—you wouldn’t be too far off thinking a committee of signification wizards wrote an entire codex on how to make signs work. There’s an entire psychology that goes into designing signs, so brace yourself, it’s gonna get nerdy.
Traffic signs, for instance, have several key aspects to them. They catch your eye, but are not distracting; stick figures that signify movement trigger your brain to be more attentive to movement; and dynamic signs call you out on your speed much more effectively as opposed to slow signs. All of this is essentially based on triggering your subconscious while you drive, and you react to them naturally. Yes, you can assume that the same wizards are behind this magic.
But there’s more to life than traffic signs. Good signage can have many, many, purposes. While information and direction are key purposes of signs, they can also be a learning experience (like in a museum or a national park), form an image for a place (background in a kindergarten), communicate rules (how to behave in a zoo with specific animals around), or even provide a sense of local pride by boasting about a place’s history or culture.
Some might think of a sign as a singular, independent object, but more often than not, signs form systems of signage. Just like road signs or name plaques next to offices on a campus are collectively part of a larger sign system in a specific location.
