On Taste
Taste discourse has been hot on twitter lately. What is taste? How to think about it in the age of AI? People are saying taste is the only thing that separates good design from bad design, especially AI slop. And that AI will never have taste, etc.
Reading all these debates made me think about my own view. What do I think about taste? which side am I on as a designer? I feel like I needed to have an opinion about it or a hot take.
So I tried searching my brain for one and was disappointed to find zero takes. I guess my designer brain was preoccupied with other things that seemed more interesting than taste.
When you walk into an old gothic cathedral and feel the energy of the place, split in awe and in wonder. Do you think, wow whoever made this, “got taste.”?
Or when you walk in a garden that fits just right beside a house that is loved and tended to. Each flower, each grass growing and bringing such life to a house in a way that fits perfectly. Do you think, wow this gardener “got taste”?
Or when you hold a good piece of hardware like a MacBook that works (mostly) seamlessly and makes your life so much easier is it about taste?
When I think of beautiful and useful and true things, they never unfolded from taste. As if it’s a magical totem that one has and can sprinkle on an object to make it good.
There’s also Bourdieu’s version: taste as class distinction, a marker of who’s in and out. This is a rabbit hole that’s outside the scope of this personal blog post but important on any discussion of taste.)
What I’m concerned with in design, is beyond both.
It’s more about the maker bringing into life, a form that fits its specific context so naturally. Creating conditions in which something true and beautiful can emerge. Finding the center which is alive. The heartbeat of the thing. And then designing towards that wholeness and aliveness. Not taste.
Instead of thinking about taste, the more interesting and expansive questions for me are these:
- How do we cultivate in ourselves this capacity for deep feeling?
- How can we be more perceptive of wholeness and aliveness in things?
- What kind of attention would that require?
Life isn’t a matter of taste.
One of my favorite quotes about wholeness comes from Christopher Alexander: "freedom from inner contradiction”.
It’s when you arrive at something true and whole.
That’s it, that’s the point.