on taste

Updated 1 day ago

on its own, taste is not very meaningful. it’s an opinion: every one has their own idea of what constitutes good work, what makes a bad movie, what music they like, and so on.

implicit in taste, however, is hierarchy. this operates at the most obvious level of elevating certain types of work while lowering others, but also functions at a social level—i.e., being seen as someone with “good” or “bad” taste. in this way, taste can protect not only your sense of self-worth and belonging within an in-group, but also reinforce that group’s sense of superiority over others (because—god forbid—you end up as someone who has “bad taste”).

over time, taste can be formalized through patterns and structures at the institutional level, where it is reproduced and reinforced through education and the broader cultural environment.

we cannot avoid taste, and trying to do so should not be our project or goal. instead, we simply ought not to take taste all that seriously, given that, operating purely on its own, it has no way to anchor itself in anything other than a subjective point of view.

in a practical creative context, taste becomes more valuable when it moves into legibility. this is the work of creative direction: to guide a team toward a specific vision, and help them internalize what is and is not coherent with that work. that is: your ability to communicate and execute on a vision matter just as much, if not more so, than the vision itself.

this framing, however, is ultimately incomplete without an examination of the relationship between taste and craft.

the act of making instills a certain sensibility in the maker: that is as true for painting as it is for code. there is “taste” in the sense of one’s own subjective preference, but also a kind of learned judgment through making. in art, this is often described as the “eye” (in relationship to the “hand”).

while not purely objective, this type of judgment can only emerge through direct, ongoing dialogue with the material of one’s craft. in this respect, creative direction, as with teaching, can operate only by proxy.