The r/dontdeadopeninside subreddit has been up and running for nearly a decade, all the way since mid-2014. Since then, the community has grown to encompass over 681k members from all over the world.

The name of the group is rooted in the hit TV series, ‘The Walking Dead,’ which had a promotional poster that had the words ‘Don’t Open’ on one half of the chained doors and ‘Dead Inside’ on the other. When read from left to right, due to the weird spacing, the message becomes ‘Don’t Dead Open Inside’ instead of the intended ‘Don’t Open Dead Inside.’

According to Know Your Meme, ‘Don’t Dead Open Inside’ is one of the most well-recognized examples of messages that aren’t read as they should be because there’s no instantly-recognizable, clear way to tell what order the words ought to be in. It takes a moment to really get the message, by which time the impact the sign could have had is lost.

The meme spread on Twitter in 2010 as more and more people started realizing this. Throughout the next few years, internet users started coming up with memes and jokes based on this. Eventually, this led to the creation of r/dontdeadopeninside in 2014, which continues to be very popular to this day.

There are a few main rules that the members of the DDOI community ought to follow. “Signs must be read correctly top to bottom, and incorrectly left to right, like any text usually. Though it does not matter how easily you can read them, it is highly encouraged to only post images with little separation or spacing between the columns of words,” the moderator team running the group explains.

Meanwhile, redditors are encouraged to be original with their content: reposting the most popular pics of all time or signs from the last 4 months isn’t tolerated. Your posts might end up getting removed. Moreover, signs that have been staged or faked also have no place on this sub. Finally, internet users are asked to be civil to each other and to put the wrong way to read the message in the titles of their posts.

As we’ve covered on Bored Panda previously, clarity and brevity are absolutely vital when creating signs. Essentially, you only have a moment to get your message across. So if you cause even the slightest amount of confusion, you’ve basically negated the whole point of your sign, and it's best to start over.

What really helps avoid these errors is being patient and diligent. First of all, you need to put in the time and care to create the best possible version of the sign possible, along with a few alternatives. Then, take a break, come back to your design, and look at it with fresh eyes. You’re bound to see things very differently than when you’re face-deep into drafting the sign.

Secondly, you should definitely take the time to show your design to a few different people, whether they’re your relatives, close friends, coworkers, or—heck—even some passersby on the street. You’re essentially conducting a bit of research with tiny focus groups. They might catch a silly mistake you left in or might end up interpreting the entire sign very differently than you intended. It’s better to deal with a dash of embarrassment now than tons of it later.

If you’re working on a very important project, you might want to consider hiring some professionals to help you, instead of doing everything yourself. Find a designer with a decent reputation to flesh out some of your ideas. Meanwhile, consider getting in touch with a proofreader or editor as well. We all make silly mistakes from time to time, and it helps to have a real pro in your corner.

The fact is that if you just wing it, you might end up losing your audience or potential customers. The more fluent your font is, the clearer your message. And vice versa! How trustworthy and likable you and your business are depends a lot on how you brand everything. Ideally, everything should be as legible as possible. With a focus on readable fonts, good kerning, and an overall design that focuses people’s attention where you want it to.

Here at Bored Panda, we’re very big fans of poorly designed signs—we can’t get enough of these trainwrecks! As such, we’ve featured the genius of r/dontdeadopeninside time and again. If you’d like to see some more chaotic signs that are definitely going to be misinterpreted, check out our earlier lists here and here, as well as here and here.