Let’s say I was in a quiet little town tucked into the hills. The kind where you hear wind before cars and there’s this hardware store that is still using handwritten labels! I’d wandered out after breakfast, coffee still in hand, and ended up behind an old restaurant with chipped paint and a few crooked parking signs. I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular, just walking. That’s when I saw this odd little post tucked in some gravel and weeds. It looked like it meant business! … even if there wasn’t anyone around to enforce it. Something about how serious it looked in such an empty lot made me stop. So I took a picture. I liked the contrast; how the world can be so quiet yet so dramatic at the same time.
The original sign said “DO NOT LEAVE THIS PARKING LOT WITHOUT YOUR CAR (CARS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER’S EXPENSE),” but I chose to look at it a different way, “DO NOT LEAVE THIS PARKING LOT.” The phrase on its own feels weirdly forceful. Like… it’s not about parking anymore, but about control. Almost like life itself is standing there with crossed arms saying, “Hey. Don’t even think about going anywhere.” Perhaps, if I treated it as life advice, maybe it’s a reminder not to bail on my responsibilities, not to leave a place or situation before you’ve done what you came to do. Or perhaps it’s the opposite–warning not to stay stuck in the same place just because you’re scared to leave. It’s funny how chopping off a few words can flip meaning completely.
Hm… this was an interesting creative challenge now that I think about it. We’re so used to reading signs without thinking, but if you isolate part of some text, suddenly it feels poetic or unsettling or just strange. It makes me want to pay closer attention when I walk past signs or labels and play with them for a bit, like they’re unintentional metaphorical messages hiding in plain sight. They show that meaning isn’t what it seems. It’s built by what we different individuals see in it and what we take away from it.
This whole experience reminded me that even the most ordinary things like a parking sign can become part of a story if you look at them differently. I came across this piece on traditional signwriting and creative lettering, and it made me think about how much intention goes into the way signs are made, even when they seem purely for functional purposes. Whether it’s letters painted by hand or bold block fonts, signs are designed to be noticed. But when we crop them, reframe them, or just read them out of context like for this challenge, they start to feel more like poetry than instruction. That shift from directing to reflective is what made this assignment so unexpectedly fun.
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