20 Clever Ideas That Need Some Respect

This billboard in London does a fantastic job of promoting a new show. Although you can see Dracula in profile, the image is created using shadows.

The Arabic alphabet is read from right to left. This can of 7-Up includes the Arabic word for "seven" in the red dot, while the 7 is hiding the Arabic word for "up".

These owl decoys are designed to scare off certain birds. One small bird sees right through the decoy and has built a beautifully protected nest behind the fake owl.

This cafe has planted a hydroponic cactus in a plastic cup. The genius comes in the fact that an inverted dome lid is used to perfectly suspend the cactus.

The big sign at LAX is holiday-themed in December, but the really cool part is that, if you look close, the snowflake shapes are made out of tiny planes.

I made a similar clock in grade school, although mine only counted minutes. This clever clock doesn't need winding or batteries — just ball bearings.

Pickles can be hard to wrangle out of the jar sometimes — using fingers is gross, while forks can have trouble corraling the pickle. This jar includes a handy-dandy purpose-built tool.

This open/closed sign...errr, open/nope sign...shows a pretty cool way to use the same letters to communicate opposite messages.

This toy store had a big, unsightly duct running along the ceiling, so staff decided to camouflage it by turning it into a fantastical fire-breathing dragon.

The box design of these Skinny Cow ice cream things is laid out so that, however they're stacked in a freezer case, the graphics line up.

This cafe in Charleston, South Carolina, used the street it's located on as inspiration for its name. I love the fact that people will only get the joke if they approach from a certain angle.

Most TP rolls have dead space in the middle, but this roll includes even more toilet paper — all rolled up in a convenient form factor.

Scaffolding is ugly, so the city of Rome decided to hide the unsightly renovation work on this building by cladding the scaffolding with aesthetically pleasing graphics.

Bar codes use simple technology to read the spacing and thickness of vertical lines. This bar code has a little fun with the format by turning it into a picture.

I appreciate this steakhouse for its on-point door handles. It also saves you the trouble of bringing your own door-opening meat cleaver from home.

Jigsaw puzzles are nice to look at, but are you really going to bother to frame one? This bottle-shaped puzzle creates a cool statement piece once it's put together.

This cigarette collection box is also a voting booth. It's not like the vote will really decide anything, but it is a clever way to distract people into not tossing their butts on the ground.

Most paper towel rolls give you the option of tearing off a slightly shorter piece, but this one goes a step further to help with those really small jobs.

This brewery makes its urinals out of something that breweries have in abundance: an old beer keg. I'm not sure if this constitutes upcycling or downcycling.

This will only fool somebody who's looking at it from a certain angle, but I have to give the builder marks for finding a totally unique way to disguise this outhouse.