Have you ever looked at a random item in daily life (say, a soda cap or the hole in the top of a pen cap), and thought to yourself, wait… why is this designed like this? Not like a real existential thought, but rather like, huh, that’s bizarre, did someone really intentionally design it that way? After which, you likely forgot about it all together, and your brain filed it away and moved on.

Here is the thing: a lot of weird design aspects?… not necessarily random. Someone, somewhere, consciously thought about that. It has a reason for that weird bump or notch or hole or groove or whatever it is. Like… most of us just never knew. Somewhere, in the 1970s, the information may have been distributed and we all collectively forgot. Who knows.

Anyway, I found a bunch of these, and some of them are really wild. Stuff you probably use every single day without knowing it has a hidden purpose in embedded in the design. Fifteen, to be exact. Let’s just say after this you may look at your stuff a little differently. Or not. It is up to you.