What even is taste?

What even is taste?

In the words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep saying that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

Taste could be defined as knowing what looks good.

But taste is also linked to both personal preference and aesthetic discernment.

“Life of a meme” by @alexkrokus​

Taste and "what looks good" is subjective in a lot of ways.

Personal preference is personal.

It’s an opinion.

No one can argue with you about what your favorite color is.

And each type of aesthetic has its own individual set of conventions.

So “what looks good” is taste. But taste is built on...

You can see how we’re beginning to travel in circles here.

So what is “good” anyway?

There are principles and there is preference.

Principles are mostly objective. Balance, contrast, hierarchy, proportion, harmony, clarity.

These can be achieved by manipulating the fundamentals of design.

You can achieve this without much aesthetic. Not much aesthetic is an aesthetic on its own.

In many cases, minimalism is close to this—a strong focus on the fundamentals of design, especially composition and negative space.

The lens on top of these fundamentals comes from personal preference.

Whether that’s the preference of a CEO, Head of Brand, or an individual designer.

Or maybe the thing they all believe what their target market prefers.

Either way it’s a personal preference or the idea of what someone’s personal preference may be.

Something can be beautifully designed without everyone liking it.

And something else can be incredibly popular without it being well designed.

Culture (the market in general) decides
what gets popular and what becomes valuable.

But being popular or valuable doesn’t automatically mean, this is good.

There’s this ever-persisting idea that taste is going to be the big advantage designers have over AI.

But this is really mixing two ideas.

AI is great at recognizing patterns and following instructions, for the most part.

It can study tons of examples and “learn” what people tend to consider “beautiful” or “good.”

But if taste is “knowing what looks good” you can see how the theory of “taste is the last moat” begins to fall apart.

However.

Having good taste isn’t the same as having a strong point of view from a place of personal conviction.

A point of view is what you believe matters. The things you care about. The choices you’re willing to make. And the reasons behind those choices.

Two people can both have excellent taste and proceed to create vastly different types of work.

One is not automatically better than the other.

AI can imitate, but it doesn’t have conviction behind the work.

So what now?

To create with “taste” ...

Learn the principles if you don’t know them.

Learn how typography works.

Learn how to create hierarchy and how to organize information clearly.

Learn the foundations that will help you make better decisions instead of just guessing.

Get some conviction.

Expose yourself to great design.

Study work from different industries, cultures, and time periods.

Pay attention to what you like and what you don’t like, and most importantly why.

This is for YOU to decide.

Then start making things.

Recreate things, try different approaches, make mistakes. Analyze your work. Get feedback.

Develop stronger instincts and become more confident in your decisions.

This process never ends, unless you want to stop improving.

The end goal isn’t to have everyone develop the same magical moat-creating taste.

The goal is to develop good judgment and eventually a point of view that is truly your own.

Keep making things.