The importance of taste, and other lies we tell ourselves
It’s not taste that will set designers apart from AI. It’s judgment.
There’s that word again. Taste.
Listen to a few podcasts with designer A talking to designer B in echo chamber C, and you’ll likely hear it a few more times.
We’re talking about taste like it’s the thing that will keep the cyber robots from stealing away our jobs.
It’s not that I disagree. But I think once again we’ve rushed out of our way to promote exactly the wrong word to convey what we really mean.
Where do I start?
When I hear the word taste, I often think about fashion.
Somebody who dresses well is often considered to have great taste, but what does that really mean? Is it something born within us, or is it developed over time?
Despite deep respect for people with good fashion sense, there’s a truth that often floats above the mystique of someone’s innate ability of looking sharp:
To dress well is to dress appropriately.
In other words, forethought to context (e.g. an incoming rainstorm) often plays a part in the senses people see in us.
When we talk about having taste during our collective AI storming and norming phase (to borrow from Tuckman’s group development model), I know we’re talking about something similar.
But it also takes time, which leads to experience, which leads to judgment and arbitration — the real words we mean when we talk about taste in this context.
Fade to gray
When I was in art school, we used to have some bang-out critiques — some real barn burners, if you want to know. Unlike my business-credit-taking dorm buddies, fine art studio sessions were often three-hour jams that culminated in everyone hanging up their work for stark and uncomfortable examination.
We learned techniques from the old masters to create wonderful studies of light and shadow on objects, scenes, and eventually the human figure, culminating with ourselves in portrait.
We used sandpaper to sprinkle charcoal dust on heavy paper, creating a mid-tone canvas for adding light with a chamois and a series of erasers. First darkening with more charcoal, then finding and building our tolerance for shape, mood, and eventually meaning.
Pro tip: The secret to finding shadows is simply squinting your eyes.
Regardless of the subject, there was always a time requirement. We were expected to put an hour into our first take-home assignments. Then two. Then three. Then eventually six.
Six!? Everyone outside of the art program scoffed at this labor-intensive task.
Once the work was ready to present, my professor, a perky and passionate painter with a Texas drawl, would start at the left of the wall and work her way over during our always-awkward crits, pointing and smiling to each piece before a word was even spoken.
She always, without fail, asked the same question starting each student’s critique.
How many hours?
How many hours? How many hours? How many hours, y’all?
We’d all wait until a fellow student chimed in, giving a rough estimate based on the work in front of us.
Looks more like one to me.
Invariably, the artist would cave — admit to going to an all-nighter at Blue House or some downtown bar, and only finding a spare 20 minutes over a hungover weekend to put together a passable representation.
This admission was necessary because it was always obvious in contrast to the other work. The output always told the story.
Time is evident in craft. What we put into it is usually what we get out of it.
What I learned in those classes informs me to this day.
Quality isn’t automatic. It’s nurtured through time, technique, and feedback from others who are willing to tell us what they see in our own work.
It’s a process of discovering and defining what good looks like. And it comes over time, which is necessary for knowing how our work is received relative to the unforgiving forum of mass perception.
Compare this with today’s AI slop and the absurd notion of “Look what I did with X number of prompts” — it starts to feel like an oxymoron.
The idea that taste is the antidote to bad AI decisions simplifies a much more nuanced conversation.
And that’s why I think taste isn’t the right word. It’s too foofy.
Not to mention that in 25 years of doing UX and product design, I’ve never heard a user express any appreciation for the taste of a particular design— let alone the designer. Seldom are products elevated at the surface level that word immediately conjures.
In other words
What we’re really reaching for isn’t taste. It’s a strong point of view, shaped by memory, practice, and a willingness to stay in the work long enough to know what matters.
That’s our goal. And it hasn’t really changed.
Businesses will always want output that’s better, faster, and cheaper.
But generative AI? I see it more like the charcoal and the eraser — not the finished piece.
It can help us block in the basics. It might even suggest a direction or tease out a shape we hadn’t seen before. But we should be the ones squinting to see what’s there. AI can’t choose what to leave out, or where to press harder. It doesn’t know when to stop, when to share, or when to start over.
That’s not subjective taste. That’s practiced judgment.
And judgment only comes from showing up again and again — building tolerance for ambiguity, seeking critique, and developing the context to make decisions with intent.
So maybe the next time we reach for “taste” as the thing that separates us from the machine, we take a beat.
What we really mean is more nuanced.
What we’re trying to say is: I’ve been here before. I know what good looks like. And I know what to do next — because I’ve put in the hours.
It’s not taste that makes the difference.
It’s time well spent.
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