“I develop taste by staring at a firehose of options and feedback, then learning which decisions actually matter visually. Clear feedback comes from showing the thing early, watching reactions, and iterating fast enough that people feel heard.”
“I developed taste the slow way, by looking at thousands of layouts, then building them in markup and CSS to see where my eye had been wrong. When I give feedback now, I prototype the change in a browser so the other person can feel it rather than just imagine it.”
“I spent years assuming good taste meant knowing what looked expensive, until I realised it was really about knowing what the work was trying to do.”
“Taste isn't a mood board, it's a filter. At COPE we run every Marc Jacobs idea through Find Your Contradictions before it gets made, and the good ones land without explanation. Clear feedback works the same way: name the specific thing that breaks the filter, not the feeling it gave you.”
“Taste is the slowest thing you build and the hardest thing to explain, which is why I borrowed Jason Sperling's Feedback 1-2-3 at Meta: ABSOLUTELY CHANGE, ENCOURAGE TO CHANGE, IMHO CHANGE. It forces me to separate what I know from what I merely prefer, and it teaches the room to read my reaction before I find the words.”
“I developed taste by taking hundreds of photographs a day and learning that a tiny shift in angle or moment changes everything. When I give feedback now, I try to point at that exact shift: what moved, what aligned, what changed.”
“Taste, to me, is just a strong opinion you can defend. I trained mine by doing a lot, fast, then deciding what I actually liked instead of what I was supposed to like.”
“I developed taste by getting the Resident Evil 3D trailer wrong first, then learning to say exactly what I needed from the animator instead of make it cool. Clear visual feedback is a direction, not a mood board.”
“I built taste by screenshotting work I liked and mixing colours in Figma until my eye caught what worked. Clear feedback means naming the problem, not just saying looks great: fix the hierarchy, the type feels amateur, this colour kills the brand.”