What makes a googly-eye placement funny

Two people can stick a pair of googly eyes on the same bin and get completely different results. One produces a small shock of recognition, the sort of thing you photograph and show someone. The other produces a bin with some eyes on it. The materials are identical, so the difference has to lie in judgement: where the eyes go, how big they are, which way they look and what else is going on nearby. This guide is about that judgement, and it is deliberately about craft rather than rules. For the practical side, see sticking and removing, and for what is and isn't appropriate to decorate, see etiquette and permission.

Every example below is invented for illustration. None of them is a report of a real sighting.

The object has to be ready to be a face

A googly eye works because we are primed to find faces, and a pair of eyes tells the viewer that a face has been there all along. The most reliable placements therefore start with an object that is already almost a face and only needs the last piece. Look for a front and a back, for a pair of matching features, or for a shape with a clear top. A postbox has a wide slot that reads as a mouth. A water fountain has a spout that looks like a nose or a beak. A car-park ticket machine has a screen that suggests a forehead and a coin slot that suggests a mouth.

Objects without that built-in structure can still work, but they ask more of you. A plain concrete bollard is a blank column, and two eyes on it make a ghost, which is a perfectly good joke but a different one. Before you reach for the glue, spend ten seconds walking around the object and asking which side it would choose to face the world. Eyes on the wrong side of a bin, away from the street, are wasted on the wall behind it.

Size: the quiet decision that does most of the work

Eye size relative to the object is the first thing a viewer reads, before they know they are reading anything. Roughly speaking, small eyes on a large object make it look tiny-minded and slightly anxious, as if a very big thing were peering out of a very small gap. Large eyes on a small object make it look startled, innocent or hungry. Both can be funny, but they are different characters, and it helps to decide which one you want.

Imagine a squat green utility box on a footpath. Two eyes the size of a thumbnail, set near the top edge, give it the look of a patient creature waiting for a bus. Swap them for two eyes the size of saucers and the same box becomes a startled frog. Nothing else changed.

A useful habit is to hold a candidate eye at arm's length and squint. If it still reads as an eye from several paces away, it is big enough for a street.

Direction and gaze

The pupil is the whole performance. A googly eye has no eyelid and no eyebrow, so the pupil's resting position is the only expression you get, and it is worth thinking about as a deliberate choice rather than letting gravity decide.

Looking straight ahead gives a blank, mild, slightly stunned look. It is the default and it is rarely the best option.

Looking at each other makes the object cross-eyed and dim, a sort of gentle bewilderment. It works best on narrow objects where the eyes sit close together.

Looking up suggests the object is watching something above it: a bird on a wire, a sign, a passing plane.

Side eye is the richest of the lot. Both pupils resting at the same lower corner give the object a suspicious, knowing look, as if it had just overheard something. It is the gaze most people mean when they say an installation has personality.

Because the pupil is loose, it moves with the weather, with wind, with passing knocks and with the angle of the surface. On a vertical surface the pupil usually settles at the bottom, which means you get a drooping, tired look whether you wanted one or not. If you want the pupil elsewhere, a tiny dab of glue behind it, or a surface that tilts the right way, will hold it where you want it.

Asymmetry is where character comes from

Two identical eyes, level and evenly spaced, make a tidy and rather dull face. Many of the best placements break the pair on purpose. Use one large eye and one small, one eye set a little higher than the other, or one pupil looking at the viewer while the other looks away. The effect is the same as in a good caricature: the small irregularity is where the personality sits.

Be careful, though, because there is a difference between charming asymmetry and a sloppy job. Charming asymmetry looks decided. A slightly lopsided pair on a battered recycling bin reads as the bin's own quirk, while a pair that has plainly been stuck on in a hurry, with one hanging off its adhesive, reads as litter.

Use the features that are already there

The best placements borrow from the object rather than ignoring it. A few ways that tends to happen:

Restraint

The pull, once you have the glue out, is to keep going: a second pair, a hat, a drawn-on smile. Resist it. Two eyes are funny because they are the minimum that changes the meaning of the object. Add more and the viewer's attention shifts from "that thing has a face" to "someone has decorated that thing", which is a much weaker reaction.

Restraint also applies to quantity. A single pair on one postbox in a long row is a discovery. Eyes on every postbox is a pattern, which has its own appeal but is no longer a surprise.

Context and timing

The same eyes can mean different things depending on what surrounds them, and the best placements make the setting part of the joke.

Picture a pair of eyes on a roadwork barrier, resting side eye towards a hole in the footpath. The barrier appears to be giving the hole a hard look. Move those same eyes to a barrier in an empty car park and the joke disappears, because nothing is there for the barrier to look at.

Or imagine a wheelie bin near a cafe, with its eyes turned up towards a sign warning about seagulls. Now the bin has a stake in the situation. The setting has handed it a motive.

Timing matters too, in a slower way. A placement beside a school might be funniest on a weekday morning, when the children arrive and notice it. A pair on a bus stop looks different at the start of a rainy commute, when it seems as miserable as everyone in the queue, than at midday on a sunny Saturday. You cannot always plan this, but when you can choose between times of day or seasons to look at your own placement, it is worth a second visit to see how it reads.

How the setting changes the joke

It is useful to think of three broad settings and what each tends to do.

A tidy, formal setting such as a civic square or a polished office foyer makes eyes feel like a small act of mischief. The contrast is the joke, and it needs the lightest touch because the surroundings are unforgiving of anything messy.

A rough, working setting such as a loading bay, a bike path or an industrial estate makes eyes feel like company. The same pair that seems cheeky in a square seems companionable beside a skip, because the setting has so little charm of its own.

A natural setting is where eyes tend to work least well, because a landscape already has its own drama. The etiquette guide explains why this deserves particular care.

Before you stick

Ask which side the object presents to the world, whether the eyes will read from a few paces, where the pupils will sit once gravity and weather have finished, and whether you could stop at one pair. Then take a good photograph: the photography guide is the place to start. And remember that the best placement is one that can be taken down cleanly when its time is up, a point covered in the guide to sticking and removing.

Last update: 2026-10-16 AWST