Developing Taste (emilkowal.ski)

Almost universally the worst designs come from designers.

Example: only someone who fetishized design would make a keyboard the didn't work just so it could be a mm thinner.

The best designs come from those who interview, research, and test with a broad and representative sample of real users.

I've always been a fan of Paul Graham's essay, "Taste for Makers". It's arguably more relevant today than when he wrote it in 2002.

https://paulgraham.com/taste.html

I appreciate this perspective. Currently reading "On Writing" and would argue that Stephen King's perspective would be pretty similar to what's laid out here: surround yourself with good influences and your work gets better, and dissect why something is good (or bad).

Another point which may apply is to purposefully engage with work you don't like, because if you can figure out why it sucks, it'll help you make work that doesn't suck!

Articles like these are trite bullshit. Loads of great talent across the greater world of art that goes unrecognized. Nobody would call it good taste because hardly anyone can recognize it as such.

Taste doesn’t matter when slop puts food on the table.

Write the article you’d rather write: how to make money. That’s the main slant here of wanting to have differentiation. “Taste” was a marketing tool by Jobs telling people what they wanted to hear. This is why it’s called people management. You calibrate output based on input. If someone is receptive to being complimented, you give them a compliment while taking their money.

Don’t beat around the bush.

people say taste is the differentiator but I hate that because taste is personal, whereas culture is communal

taste without curation for the community, with an eye to what is culturally edifying, is just consumerism