The accidental brilliance of makeshift signs | Kate Canales

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Accidental Brilliance of Makeshift Signs

Podcast: TED Talks Daily
Episode: The accidental brilliance of makeshift signs | Kate Canales
Date: April 13, 2026
Host: Elise Hu
Guest: Kate Canales

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Overview

In this insightful TED Talk, designer and professor Kate Canales dives into her quirky obsession with makeshift, handmade signs found in everyday life. By sharing her decades-long photographic archive of these ad hoc instructions—from taped-up notes on doors to scrawled bathroom warnings—Canales offers a meditation on human ingenuity, the realities of design, and our enduring need to help one another navigate the world. The episode highlights not just the design failures that necessitate these signs, but also the unexpected care and humor embedded in them.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Practice of Noticing and Collecting Signs

• Canales' Superpower: “My design superpower is noticing. I am pretty much always watching how people navigate the designed world.” (Kate Canales, 04:06)
• Documents signs that help clarify confusing interfaces or situations.
• Sees herself as “almost like an anthropologist in the world of everyday instructions.” (Kate Canales, 01:04, 07:33)

The Nature of Makeshift Signs

• Improvised, unslick, and often humorous messages:
  • Example: A door handle in a parking garage labeled with a hasty “Push then Pull.” (04:52)
  • A clock with a big “Broken” sign—and another functional clock next to it. (04:52)

The Function and Necessity of Extra Instructions

• “Something is technically fully functioning… but it's not really usable without this extra layer of instruction.” (Kate Canales, 05:53)
• Case of a keypad that only works if you “press star at end of code,” necessitating a sign. (06:09)

Humans as After-the-Fact Designers

• The people who make these signs “are coming in after the work of the original design team… to make it so that you can actually do the thing that you're trying to do.” (06:23)

Icons and Intuitive Cues

• Sometimes signs are subtle, like door handles with hand shapes—“Pretty self explanatory, right?” (06:48)
• Other cases are less clear: A fire-engine-red plate assumed to be an emergency button is actually just a light switch, clarified by a bright pink laminated sign. (07:16)

Recurring Environments and Themes

• Point of Sale Machines: “I have dozens and dozens of pictures of little handwritten notes on point of sale credit card machines… all different.” (08:07)
  • Frequent confusion leads to multiple, sometimes competing, instructions.
• Public Bathrooms: An “inexplicably large proportion” of collected signs are from bathrooms. (08:41)
  • Example: “Do not sit on the sink” posted above a more common “Close lid before you flush.” (09:02)
  • Signs like “Notice: toilets and urinals flushed with reclaimed water. Do not drink.” (09:51)

Over-Designed Interfaces and Human Adaptation

• Machines can be so overdesigned or ambiguous that their true purpose requires explanation.
  • Example: A high-tech water dispenser whose function only becomes clear thanks to makeshift signs. (10:31)

From Critique to Appreciation

• Initially, Canales sought bad design, but came to cherish the signs as “examples of ingenious human problem solving.” (11:08)
• Example of an emphatic office door sign: “This is not a restroom”—the word “not” underlined three times. (11:28)

Sign as a Record of Problem Solving

• “When we arrive on the scene, the sign is already here… I love to imagine what was happening before there was a sign.” (12:08)
• The challenge of designing clear experiences: “It is really hard to design experiences for people that are super clear. It's almost existential.” (12:48)

Hallmarks of Humanity and Community

• Even the simplest instructions (“Downstairs, Upstairs”) reveal the perpetual gap between intention and user experience. (13:34)
• "These push signs with their little scotch tape borders... this is so tender to me. This is so human.” (14:21)

The Capstone Image: The Ostrich Pen

• Final anecdote: At the Texas State Fair, instead of a warning sign, there's simply, “We are not responsible for accidents.” (15:04)
  • Canales reads these signs as “little love letters from strangers”—evidence that “we still need each other out here in the real world to do some very basic things.” (14:34, 15:06)

Philosophy of Noticing and Gratitude

• “It brings me gratitude. It is an incredible practice of noticing and I think it's a lovely little... almost like a meditation practice and such a delightful lens that I carry all the time.” (15:53)
• Closing message: “The person who came before us took the time to leave some instructions to make sure that our experience is a little bit better than theirs. And that is a sign of humanity that I am always happy to stumble upon.” (16:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I think of myself as almost like an anthropologist in the world of everyday instructions.” (Kate Canales, 01:04; 07:33)
• “Other times, this sign is actually helping us think. We have been so trained to see red as danger. Thankfully, here someone is letting us know it is just a light switch.” (06:58)
• “You would be forgiven for thinking it could do more like send a fax or analyze a blood sample. It has been so over designed, so slicked out, its function is not legible to us until someone made these signs.” (10:14)
• “I see these signs everywhere as a lens over the world... they're like little love letters from strangers.” (15:06)
• “The person who came before us took the time to leave some instructions to make sure that our experience is a little bit better than theirs. And that is a sign of humanity that I am always happy to stumble upon.” (16:25)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 04:06 — Kate Canales introduces her obsession with improvised signs.
• 04:52–06:23 — Descriptions of collected signs, including “Push then Pull” and over-labeled clocks/keypads.
• 07:16 — Light switch misidentified as an emergency button, saved by a makeshift sign.
• 08:07–08:41 — Point-of-sale machine confusion; bathroom sign abundance.
• 09:02 — “Do not sit on the sink” & reclaimed water cautions.
• 10:31 — Over-designed water dispenser lacking clarity.
• 11:08–12:08 — From critiquing “bad design” to cherishing these signs as community artifacts.
• 12:48 — The dual “please use the other door” paradox.
• 13:34–14:34 — The universality of confusing doors and the kindness in corrective signage.
• 15:04 — The Texas State Fair ostrich sign: “We are not responsible for accidents.”
• 15:53–16:25 — Reflection on noticing, gratitude, and the humanity behind everyday instructions.

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Takeaways

Kate Canales turns what might be dismissed as mundane or annoying interventions into a celebration of human adaptability, care, and ingenuity. These makeshift signs reflect not just design flaws, but our persistent, communal drive to help one another navigate an increasingly complex world—one handwritten note, scrawled arrow, or laminated warning at a time. The episode encourages listeners to pay attention, appreciate these “love letters from strangers,” and perhaps even add a little sign of their own to make someone else’s experience just a bit easier.

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Transcript

[Elise Hu]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. The signs really are everywhere. If we stop to appreciate the wonder of the world, there are so many moments of accidental brilliance that can be experienced.

[Kate Canales]

Sometimes these signs are kind of subtle, you just know what to do. Other times, Sign is actually helping us think.

[Elise Hu]

That's designer and professor Kate Canales. In her talk, she shares a unique obsession with the handmade signs posted all around us, the subtle, helpful, and oftentimes hysterical extra instructions humans add to point of sale machines, doors, and conspicuously in bathrooms. She took to the TED stage to share a selection of the hundreds of photos of quirky signs she's collected over the years and offers a simple but important message.

[Kate Canales]

I think of myself as almost like an anthropologist in the world of everyday instructions. No matter how you may feel about the advancement of technology in our everyday lives, these signs are evidence that we still need each other out here in the real world to do some very basic things.

[Elise Hu]

This talk is highly visual, but we wanted to make sure we could share it with our podcast listeners as well. So we reached out to Kate and asked if she would describe the images for you, which we're including here alongside portions of her talk. That's all coming up right after a short break.

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[Elise Hu]

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[Kate Canales]

My name is Kate. I am a designer and my design superpower is noticing. I am pretty much always watching how people navigate the designed world. One of the things that I notice a lot is stuff like this. For over 20 years I have been taking photographs of signs that help us get around everyday situations. Places where for whatever reason, we just need a little extra coaching. Signs like this and like this.

Hi everyone, Kate Canales here. I'm joining you from Austin, Texas. I want to try to guide you through some of the images that I shared on stage during my talk. I opened the talk with a series of photographs that I've taken that make me think about design and how hard it is to get it right. I started out with an image of a door handle. I took this in a parking garage and above the door handle someone's used a label maker and it says Push then Pull. I also shared an image of a clock on the wall and over the clock is a huge sign that says Broken in big red letters and below it is another clock. So there are two clocks on the wall and the only way you know which clock is right is that one of them has a big sign over it that says Broken. These signs are not slick. They aren't designed in the way that you might be visualizing. They're improvised, they're on post it notes, they're scrawled with Sharpie marker. They're so ad hoc.

I really love this kind of sign a lot where something is technically fully functioning the way it was designed, like this keypad. But it's not really usable without this extra layer of instruction.

So imagine you're at a door. You need to unlock it. There's a keypad there. And this extra layer of instruction that I'm describing is a sign that says press star at end of code, which makes the keypad usable.

And I've come to see the makers of the signs as designers. They're coming in after the work of the original design team to make it so that you can actually do the thing that you're trying to do. In this case, unlock a door. Sometimes these signs are kind of subtle. You just know what to do.

Here I showed a picture of a pair of doors, and each door has the shape of a human hand on them, as if to say, push. Pretty self explanatory, right?

Other times, This sign is actually helping us think. We have been so trained to see red as danger. Thankfully, here someone is letting us know it is just a light switch.

The picture I showed here is a wall plate that is fire engine red, and it looks like a fire alarm or some other kind of emergency thing. And then above it is a laminated sign in hot pink that says, this is a light switch.

I think of myself as almost like an anthropologist. In the world of everyday instructions. I am obsessed. I have hundreds and hundreds of photographs. You've all seen signs like this. You've probably seen them already today, especially if you have paid for something. We have a very consistent issue with point of sale machines.

I take so many photographs and there are certain themes that have emerged, and one of them is around point of sale credit card machines. I have dozens and dozens of pictures of little handwritten notes on point of sale credit card machines. They're all different. Here's one that has four different signs on it that are handwritten. One says, tap and hold card over screen. One says, insert chip and it has an arrow in a certain direction. And then it says to tap and hold card over screen again in a different color.

We also, as a group, seem to really be struggling in the public bathroom. An inexplicably large proportion of my photos were taken in a public bathroom. I could have done the entire talk

using only public bathroom photos. A really curious image from my collection that speaks to this point is a sign above a toilet that says, do not sit on the sink. Which strikes me as something we shouldn't need to be told to do, but clearly as part of some kind of pattern or incident related to people sitting On a sink above it is a sign that makes a lot more sense, that says, close the lid before you flush.

And I find this bewildering, but also weirdly delightful. A place that we all use every day still requires so much guidance.

Another incredible image that speaks to this bewildering pattern of human behavior is one that says, notice toilets and urinals flushed with reclaimed water. Do not drink.

This machine fills cups with water.

That's all it does.

You would be forgiven for thinking it could do more like send a fax or analyze a blood sample. It has been so over designed, so slicked out, its function is not legible to us until someone made these signs.

At this point in the talk, I'm wanting to get into this idea that designers face about helping people perceive what to do with a design without telling them, without signs. And I'm sharing a picture of a water dispenser that looks like something from a spacecraft. It's a freestanding machine. It's got this blue lacquered plastic. It's very slick. There are no perceptible buttons. The interface is almost invisible. Nothing about it says, I'm a water dispenser. Here's where you could get water.

When I started taking these photographs, I really was on a mission to document examples of bad design, the way it frustrates and interferes. But I've become much more interested in preserving the signs as examples of ingenious human problem solving.

I feel like everybody can relate to the sign that I'm showing here. This actually was taken outside of an office door on the campus where I work. And it says in big black letters scrawled across this piece of paper, it says, this is not a restroom, and not is underlined three times. And then there's an arrow that says, it is that other way. You can kind of imagine how many times someone walked into an office thinking it was a restroom and how many times someone's office was walked into before this sign, which is very, very adamantly stated, was posted. Not is not.

When we arrive on the scene, the sign is already here. But I love to imagine what was happening before there was a. Visualize with me this scene before there was a sign. People are starting to congregate outside of

this fourth floor elevator that does not

stop on the fourth floor until someone fixed it with a sign. Now, when you are solving problems for humans and you yourself are human, sometimes it can be hard. And I have several examples of how hard sometimes it is to get this

right, to get this point across I had to share an image that is one of my absolute all time favorites that was sent to me by someone else. It's a pair of doors. They both go into the same establishment and each door has a sign taped to it that says, please use the other door. So the image reads, please use the other door. And then you move over to the next door and it says, please use the other door. As a designer, I actually appreciate how hard this is. The intention is unknown. I'm not sure how you're supposed to walk into this place, but it is really hard to design experiences for people that are super clear. It's almost existential.

The reality is that most of the signs in my collection are as simple as this. Downstairs, Upstairs, it's almost invisible. The original design assignment was not complex, but it still missed the mark. And I think a version of this is always going to be true. We're all out here designing experiences for one another. Sometimes we nail it, sometimes it is terrible. Sometimes we need someone else to come in and put a layer over it, make it okay. Walking through a door should be very intuitive, but doors are an area where we still need a ton of support. This is a reality that I actually find reassuring. These push signs with their little scotch tape borders, the very fact that there

are two of them. The image I show here is a glass door to a bodega. And there are two huge push signs in red ink that have been taped to the door.

This is so tender to me. This is so human. No matter how you may feel about the advancement of technology in our everyday lives, these signs are evidence that we still need each other out here in the real world to do some very basic things.

I chose to end the talk with an image that I took at the Texas State Fair many years ago of an ostrich who's in an enclosure.

And on the outside of the enclosure,

instead of do not feed the ostrich or be careful of your fingers, it just says, we are not responsible for accidents. So much of the world around us is designed and we sometimes need a little extra help. I see these signs everywhere as a lens over the world. And yes, they are about design, but they're like little love letters from strangers. I see them as these little notes that people are leaving for each other. Someone thought it would be important to tell me which way to turn the knob on the paper towel dispenser. And it's super helpful. It brings me gratitude. It is an incredible practice of noticing and I think it's a lovely little.

Almost like a meditation practice and such

a delightful lens that I carry all the time.

I think the reason I wanted to

do the talk was this idea of paying attention and seeing these little pieces of evidence from one another around the world. And I guess my hope would be that people see the talk and they'll notice a sign the next time. I do see these signs as evidence of how we need each other and we're doing it.

We're helping each other out.

It's so beautiful.

The person who came before us took the time to leave some instructions to make sure that our experience is a little bit better than theirs. And that is a sign of humanity that I am always happy to stumble upon. Thank you.

[Elise Hu]

That was Kate Canales at TED next 2025. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED Research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Sangmarni Vong. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Ballaraizo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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