Taste is learned

In my article Taste, Craft, and Quality in Design, I define taste simply: as pattern recognition and discernment, built through years of intentional practice and repetition. Since publishing, I’ve seen a theme in response: taste is something you’re born with. You either have it or you don’t.

A few issues with this framing, and why I’m strongly against it:

• Much like the “natural talent” myth, it discourages people from starting and flatters people who have already arrived.
• It reduces the value of practice and experience, important for those with strong taste and those who are still developing it.
• It continues a long, problematic thread of design exceptionalism, creating an us-versus-them mentality for teammates and users. Teams make great products, not individual disciplines.
• If taste were innate, it would transfer across domains. A designer can have highly developed taste in typography and simultaneously be undeveloped in information architecture.

That last point matters. Decomposing is the core skill: looking at something outside your specialization and understanding what’s working, what isn’t, and why. Each act of decomposition adds to a growing library of patterns, and over time that library starts to compound. You begin to see structure in unfamiliar work because you’ve practiced seeing structure everywhere else. That habit is learned, built through critique, mentorship, and study.

Key practices

If it isn’t innate and it can be practiced, what are the key practices?

• Critique: Giving and receiving feedback develops the vocabulary and judgment to articulate why something works or doesn’t.
• Apprenticing: Working with senior designers to understand how they judge, edit, and curate.
• Study: Continuously evaluating and decomposing design to understand the why. Then trying it yourself—figuring out what works, what doesn’t—for the sole purpose of learning.

Evaluating taste

Taste is hard to evaluate through self-reporting alone. The practices below combine direct questions with exercises and external evidence to get a fuller picture. They also double as self-assessment: if you can’t answer these with specificity, that’s ok! You can focus on these areas more intentionally.

Critique

Show a design and ask for critique in real time. Where they focus first, what they notice, and what they miss reveals more than any description of their process. Follow up with: What’s the last piece of feedback you received that changed your day-to-day practice? What was the feedback, and what did you change?

The gap between someone who critiques broadly (“it feels off”) and someone who can name the tension (“the hierarchy is fighting the reading order”) is the vocabulary that repeated critique builds.

Apprenticing

Describe a time a more experienced designer changed your mind about a design decision. What was their reasoning? Did it stick? Then ask the senior designer directly—what did this person absorb, and where did they push back? Strong taste develops through both: taking direction and knowing when to challenge it.

Study

What’s the last design you saw that impressed you? What made it work, and what would you change about it? That second question separates admiration from discernment. Anyone can recognize good work. Fewer people can hold admiration and critique simultaneously, which is the full definition of taste.

Over your time as a designer, how has your approach to design changed? What drove the change? Look for specificity: a project, a failure, a mentor, not a vague sense of evolution.

Taste isn’t binary

When we consider taste as learned, we normalize the continual nature of developing it. It’s not a destination you arrive at. Your taste at year fifteen is different from year five because your library of patterns keeps growing.

That growth also changes how taste shows up in practice. Developed taste includes knowing when to push and pull. Recognizing good is one skill. Recognizing what good looks like now, given the constraints, the timeline, and the team, is the mature version of that skill. Everyone has experienced the gap between their ideal and their reality. Closing that gap without losing what makes the work considered is where taste becomes practical.

For leaders, this reframe comes with responsibility. Investing in critique, mentorship, and time for study builds the environment where taste actually develops. That investment also creates accountability: when the practices are clear, expectations for growth become concrete. It elevates a production culture into a creative one, engaging creative people while expanding their skills.