20 Things That Tried Too Hard To Be Different And Fancy

Ashley Hunte
The "WO" in a women's washroom sign which are obscured by the female stick figure set directly behind it in a similar colour.
reddit | Kaizen336

Being creative isn't as easy as you might think. Sure, you can come up with a million ideas, but you can't actually do anything about them if they don't work in real life.

But it looks like whoever made these unnecessarily creative decisions missed that memo. They chose form, but totally forgot the function part of it all. Because these things just don't work.

"Some ceiling lights at our local shops. Would love to chat to the designer about their choices."

Uneven ceiling lights in a mall food court.
reddit | unclaudinated

I bet you anything the person who installed those lights assumed no one would be looking up, and just stuck them in there all willy-nilly. Or, maybe this was an attempt at design?

"If only there was a way to make this sentence grammatically correct!"

A stand for Hershey's chocolate bars with the slogan, "Scan here [QR code] to learn more about how you can celebrate SHE."
reddit | krichnard

I really want to know why Hershey's decided to use SHE, when HER is literally right there. It's like they forgot that there are other pronouns out there. Or, they forgot how to spell their own product.

"Yup, sure is a snail."

A card with a sloth on it. The card reads, "Totally snailed it."
reddit | thenonlanzer

I get it, sloths are slow and snails are slow. But this card would've obviously made so much more sense if they just... put a snail on it? Like, instead of a sloth for whatever reason.

"How they cut the cake at my Aunt's birthday."

A circular cake with uneven cuts going through the diameter.
reddit | hellafressh

So I've actually heard cutting a circular cake through the diameter is better than cutting it into wedges. And it looks like that's what this person was trying to do. And yet, they still managed to fail at it.

"Installed the water slide, boss."

Concrete stairs installed in a water slide.
reddit | Ixsus7703

I don't know what's going on here, but I hate every part of it. Not only does that look super uncomfortable, but dangerous, too. How could people actually think doing something like this is worthwhile?

"This Polo hoodie…"

A hoodie in a store that reads, "Polo," but the L matches the background colour.
reddit | thheeLegend27

I'm not gonna lie, I legitimately wouldn't have thought that was supposed to say "polo" unless OP pointed it out. The fact that they made the L almost the same color as the background is so bad, it's almost like they did it on purpose.

"The placement of this towel rack."

A bathroom towel rack installed so close to the counter, you can't actually hang towels on it.
reddit | j-j19293

On the plus side, the towel rack is actually really nice. It's just too bad you can't really use it for anything. You'd probably be better off just sticking the hand towel in a pile on the counter.

"Why not just one railing down the middle?"

A slightly rounded staircase with railings on either side, as well as two railings going through the middle and blocking some of the steps.
reddit | thesuavedog

Not only does this look weird, it isn't even! It feels like somebody tried to make this staircase look fancy, but just made it look like one giant headache instead. It almost hurts to look at, actually.

"Non water resistant label on a Shampoo bottle."

A shampoo bottle with text in a foreign language. Part of the label has peeled off.
reddit | Objective-Bid8085

Yeah... I'm not really sure why you'd want a shampoo bottle (which is going to get wet) that has a peeling label. That would bother me so much, I'd probably just stop washing my hair altogether.

"A paint job on a hotel wall that looks like mold. Also a lamp just above the pillow; I had to unscrew the light bulb to avoid the risk of shattering it."

A hotel room with green smudges on a white wall, as well as a lamp directly on top of where a person would rest their head.
reddit | JohnyAfor

This hotel room is weirding me out right now. Somebody made these design decisions, and is now expecting people to pay money to stay there.

"All these are space grey color according to Apple."

A list of various iPhones and other Apple products in the space grey colour. They're all various shades.
reddit | Background-Panda3960

*Insert Fifty Shades of Gray joke here.*

I wonder how many Apple users have actually noticed that Space Gray had been a different shade in pretty much every generation...

"Amount of packaging for a SD Card. There should be better way."

A SanDisk SD card in a large amount of packaging.
reddit | ramachetan

I guess this is to prevent theft? At least they don't use the unnecessary amount of plastic anymore, but still.

There has to be a better way to package micro SD cards than this.

"Landscape menu on portrait screen."

A menu display screen with the menu set to the wrong orientation.
reddit | eyesofsokath

Imagine spending all this money on a cool screen that displays your menu, only to not be able to orient the menu the right way. This is actually kind of painful to look at, not gonna lie.

"They put the lamp... under the ceiling..."

A light installed underneath ceiling grates.
reddit | B0dis

Was it an honest mistake? A strange attempt at making something look fancy? We may never know the reason, but we do know that this is probably one of the dumbest things ever. How do you change the light?

"Got some candies for you."

A Haribo box that says "hello Sweetie," using a lollipop as both the O and I.
reddit | Makroflex

Look, I absolutely get what they were going for. I do. But I can't be the only one out there whose mind registered that box as saying "Hell Sweetie," right? Because that O doesn't look like an O at all.

"Let's put the instructions on the same side of the perforated pull tab!"

Instructions for prepackaged taquitos that are cut off thanks to the perforation of the box opening.
reddit | DinkDankTheWise

I swear, it's like some companies don't want people to actually be able to eat their products. Or else, they wouldn't be sticking the instructions on the wrong side.

These chairs wouldn't hold up in the tiniest amount of rain.

A set of outdoor seats with water pooling in them.
reddit | unlocomqx

I think the worst part about this is the fact that it could be fixed with proper drainage! Like, a couple of holes in the bottom would stop gross water from pooling, and it wouldn't even make the chairs any less comfortable.

"Wash your hands with AE ƎƧ qLAOƧ."

A soap dispenser that has the word "soap" backwards, as well as the word "please" leading from the word "soap," also backwards.
reddit | camora22

I really, really, desperately need to know who decided that this was a good idea. It's so hard to read for no reason at all. I feel like people would not use soap out of spite.

"So I just walked into the wrong bathroom…"

A woman's washroom sign with a female stick figure covering the W and O in "women."
reddit | Kaizen336

See, this isn't as bad as other pictures in this list. But I also feel like if you weren't paying that much attention, you could totally walk into the wrong restroom by accident. And that would be nothing but embarrassing.

"There’s a reason why yellow tiles are not commonly used in swimming pools…"

A pool of water that's yellow for some reason.
reddit | dataisok

Yeah... I wouldn't be swimming in that thing anytime soon. It just looks like a pool full of pee. And sure, some (public) pools really are full of pee. But that's why they say that ignorance is bliss.

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