As you might have already guessed, Bored Panda is littered (in the most positive sense of the word) in posts about funny, chucklesome, and hilarious signs that make people crack up. Don’t believe me? Feast your eyes on this, this, this, this and this. There’s probably more, but you get the point.
But it’s not without reason. Signs are an inherent part of our lives, achieving much more than we sometimes expect from them. While signs are generally messengers of information, they can do more. Purposes range from the aforementioned comedic effect to advertising or social campaigns to whatever this is.
This listicle’s selection of signage comes from a Facebook page simply called Funny Signs. It is a mostly inactive page with around 24,000 followers that features hundreds of the most random shots of the most random signs being randomly funny.
The aim of the page is to collect pictures of funny and strange signs from around the world for people’s entertainment and engagement. These include warning, road, restaurant, bathroom, church and various other types and origins of signs.
Probably one of the coolest ways to use signs is what this fella decided to do. The Love On Every Billboard is an initiative kicked off by John Pogachar. One day, whilst knee-deep in work, an intrusive thought beckoned him with a question: “wouldn’t it be amazing to buy a billboard without it needing to sell or promote anything except for love?”
It wasn’t long until the thought became an idea and the idea became a reality that gained momentum and grew to a signage adventure. The idea revolves around a single word: love. It also revolves around a single color: red. This basic, yet fundamental design and concept has taken the world by storm.
What started off as a single billboard in Spokane, Washington turned into five billboards in Spokane, Washington. And then another 745+ around the globe. Yes, you read that correctly, the initiative has over 750 billboards that are solely dedicated to love.
In a short film about the Love billboards, it’s explained that Pogachar wants to leave this legacy, these Love billboards where people will be reminded that love is the foundation of everything and we need more love in the world.
Lisa Nichols Jell, the woman behind Bloom Ads, in collaboration with Outfront Media, donated one of their billboards in Los Angeles, CA to be transformed by love. She elaborated on the mission:
“Imagine a billboard that says love, and that’s all it says. And then driving past that, maybe you’re having a bad day, maybe you just had a fight with your children, maybe you just had a bad day at work or whatever. And you see this message out of nowhere. It doesn’t have any other logos on it, it doesn’t have any other messages besides ‘love.’ To me, that was very inspiring. So I thought, if it was able to reach someone—one person, 10 people, 1,000 people, 100,000 people—what an amazing thing that would be. And maybe we can change someone’s day, which can change everything.”