How to Develop Taste, and Why It’s the Key Differentiator in the World of AI
A guide to understanding, building, and applying creative taste in an AI-saturated world.
In a world awash with algorithmically generated art, writing, and design, one intangible quality is fast becoming the ultimate creative currency: taste. As AI systems churn out infinite variations at the click of a button, what sets truly great work apart is the ability to discern which of those outputs carries weight and meaning within the creative industry. The most valuable skill today is the ability to cultivate creative taste and style. Nevertheless, taste has always been the defining factor, even before AI existed. Technology may change the tools, but the instinct to choose, refine, and stand behind what matters has long been at the core of meaningful creative work.
The word taste often resists simple definition. In a creative context, it refers to a refined sense of judgment, an instinct for quality, coherence, and style that shapes every aesthetic choice. Former Harvard dean Nitin Nohria describes it as “the instinct that tells us not just what can be done, but what should be done.” Taste is judgment with style: the fusion of form and function, enriched by cultural awareness and emotional intelligence. But is it all that?
Philosophers have long debated what we mean when we talk about “taste.” In his 1757 essay Of the Standard of Taste, David Hume argued that beauty does not reside in objects themselves, but in the mind that perceives them. Judgments of beauty, therefore, are not objective facts but sentiments—expressions of feeling shaped by perception and experience. Yet Hume did not believe that all opinions carry equal weight. He proposed the idea of a “true judge”: someone whose taste has been refined through practice, comparison, sensitivity, and freedom from prejudice. For Hume, standards of taste emerge not from rigid rules, but from the cultivated discernment of those capable of deep and careful evaluation. In his Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant argued that aesthetic judgments are subjective yet carry an implicit claim to universality. When we call something beautiful, we speak from personal feeling but expect others to agree. Taste cannot be proven or decided by majority opinion, yet it aspires to shared validity.
Later thinkers complicated this view. Pierre Bourdieu argued that what society calls “good taste” is often shaped by systems of power and class distinction rather than timeless standards. Preferences for opera over pop music, minimalist interiors over ornate décor, or certain cuisines over others may reflect cultural capital more than inherent superiority. Georg Simmel similarly observed that fashion operates as a social signal: once a style is widely adopted, elites often abandon it to maintain distinction. One of the great philosophers of the 20th century, Hans-Georg Gadamer, spoke directly about taste, not as preference, but as a deeper form of understanding. For him, taste is not just knowing what you like, but developing the ability to recognise what’s good, fitting, and meaningful within a cultural or aesthetic context. This kind of discernment doesn’t come from isolation. It’s cultivated through exposure: to art, to ideas, to experiences that challenge and stretch your perspective. But it also depends on how you approach those encounters.
Gadamer believed taste grows through humility by staying open to what the world has to offer, especially the unfamiliar. Taste isn’t innate. It’s learned, shaped by dialogue, curiosity, and the willingness to be changed. As Gadamer put it, “the experience of art is an experience of meaning, and as such this experience is something that is brought about by understanding.” In this view, aesthetics and hermeneutics become inseparable. Beauty isn’t just something we feel; it’s something we interpret. To appreciate a work of art is to enter a conversation with it, to understand the world a little differently through its form, tone, and presence.
Defining Taste in Creative Work
The idea of “bad taste” further exposes how fluid these judgments can be. What was once dismissed as vulgar—camp aesthetics, kitsch art, bold maximalism, can later be reclaimed and celebrated. Designers such as Ettore Sottsass with the Memphis Group, or filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann, have embraced exaggeration and excess to challenge conventional hierarchies of refinement. Even architectural styles like the once-criticized “McMansion” have sparked debates about aspiration, class and aesthetic legitimacy. Taken together, these perspectives suggest that taste has never been a fixed measure of quality. It is shaped by perception, education, context and social structure. Long before AI entered the conversation, the real differentiator in creative work was not the tool, but the cultivated ability to choose, interpret and stand behind what matters.
This is a time of limitless creative tools and faster ways to make. But as access expands, so does the challenge of standing out. When anyone can generate, the real advantage comes from something harder to copy: personal knowledge capital. The ideas you’ve absorbed, the references you draw from, and the connections you make that others miss. AI has made creativity more accessible than ever, but also more complex. When anyone can generate, originality gets harder. The real creative test isn’t just making something, it’s making something unmistakably yours. From writing and design to art, AI can help, but only if you bring your own taste, instincts, and point of view to the table. The challenge now is not just to create, but to curate, shape, and own what you make.
If AI can produce almost anything in seconds, what role is left for human creators? Creative director Pablo Rochat and writer/designer Elizabeth Goodspeed argue that the real shift isn’t the death of craft, but a redefinition of intention. The question is no longer can it be made? But why should it be made and why should anyone care?
How Is Taste Cultivated?
As AI-generated work becomes more polished and frictionless, human “imperfections” gain value. Handmade details, visible process and behind-the-scenes context signal authenticity. Audiences respond not just to output, but to evidence that something was genuinely conceived, experienced and felt. The distinction lies in taste: not just curation of references, but lived experience and perspective. Ultimately, surrendering to what you uniquely do well is more powerful than chasing technical perfection. Still, the process remains idea-first and tool-agnostic, while technology comes secondary to whether the work is engaging and meaningful.
Good taste might seem effortless, like the product of a privileged education or natural flair. But in practice, it’s almost always built, not born. It comes from deliberate exposure, thoughtful observation, and the slow layering of influences over time. Many of the most tasteful creatives draw from unexpected places: a fashion designer shaped by brutalist architecture, an illustrator who studies punk culture and comics, an industrial designer inspired by the way nature functions and evolves. Taste lives at the intersection of curiosity, curation, boredom, and obsession.
Taste isn’t purely subjective. When it resonates with others, it becomes recognisable and, in a way, shared. People begin to see the patterns in what inspires you. Think of the great creatives whose names endure today. Their taste was distinct, and because it was consistent, it became something others could recognise and celebrate. The ability to spot familiar ideas and push beyond them is a skill. When you can shape those influences into a clear point of view, you move from following culture to shaping it.
“I always design for a parallel universe; a world that doesn’t exist. You know, one that’s like this but better.” Vivienne Westwood
It’s also about being able to recognize your ability to create and shape what you love and feed on. Eventually, what you consume and read about will emerge in your mind library, and then you’ll be able to pull them out like a puzzle, a puzzle that makes sense for you.
The idea that “taste is just personal preference” is misleading. Adults tell you everyone’s taste is valid, yet they also point to certain artists as “great,” which implies some work is better than others. In design and other creative fields, that contradiction becomes obvious: if taste were purely subjective, there would be no way to get better. Yet as people practice and refine their craft, their tastes evolve, and they see that their earlier judgments were not just different, but worse. That challenges pure relativism and suggests there really are standards of good and bad design. Across disciplines, similar principles of quality and beauty keep showing up, which means taste can be developed and strengthened rather than fixed or purely personal. This article is worth a read on the topic: https://paulgraham.com/taste.html.
“The way I think about references is that they’re a library. Everything that’s in there is important.” Grace Wales Bonner
If creativity is about output, then taste is about input. It comes from what we’ve lived, seen, and loved. That means immersing yourself in great examples of art, design, literature, music, architecture – anything that can fuel your aesthetic sense. Read classic novels and essays. Watch auteur films, browse magazines, study photography, visit museums and cities, attend concerts, and explore cuisine. Pay attention to details: the pacing of a paragraph, the curve of a chair, the color grading of a film. By filling your mind with diverse references and noticing what makes the best of them work, you start to form an internal benchmark for quality. This broad cultural literacy is the soil in which taste grows. You need to have more inputs in life to create better outputs. You should be able to reference that photographer from the 80s—the style they used, how a fast aperture gave a certain look, and what kind of treatment they gave their photos. You should also be able to draw from the music you listen to, to get inspired and translate that inspiration from your favourite artists, their visuals, and their lyrics. Think of the gallery you visited, the exhibition you saw, and how the artists approached and developed their creative process. It’s like you carry a knowledge base in your head, your own internal AI, full of references you can draw from and use to shape your work.
When I ask people what they mean by “taste,” they’ll stumble around for a bit and eventually land on something like “you know it when you see it,” or “it’s in the eye of the beholder.”
This is a thoughtful essay on the idea of “taste,” written by Brie Wolfson. Well worth a read if you’re curious about what really shapes creative judgment. One might say someone has “excellent taste” if they consistently pick out art, music, or ideas that others find compelling. As product design leader Julie Zhuo puts it, great taste means one’s preferences are so refined that “they can consistently spot excellence before others see it.”
An Observer’s Eye
Actively selecting and discriminating among those exposures to define your preferences. It’s not enough to passively consume creative works; developing taste requires you to choose favorites and ask why.
By making conscious choices about what you admire (and what you don’t), you sharpen your taste. This often entails editing down the flood of inspiration into a personal collection of references. In the digital age, this might look like meticulously maintained mood boards, playlists, or saved galleries of art that speak to you. The act of curation is essentially taste in practice – it exercises the muscle of choosing and justifying why one thing is better or more interesting than another. That’s your real creative engine. It’s how you build a sense of what works and why. While AI can now execute at speed and scale, it cannot feel or form intent. It can remix patterns, but it does not originate meaning. The real advantage lies not simply in using AI, but in knowing what to ask of it and how to shape its output into something distinctly your own.
To quote David Lee, CCO of Squarespace, “Good taste is the currency of the future.” For him, inspiration comes from outside the bubble. It’s out there in the real world. What you see on social media often feels like staring at the same four walls. But imagine all the beautiful walls out there, covered in interesting art you can admire, explore, and learn from. The ultimate act of creation is being able to shape your thoughts into something that genuinely reflects how you see the world and how you believe things should be made.
Listen to this conversation where David Lee shares why creative thinking isn’t just for making great work, it’s essential for leading teams and building better businesses. It’s pretty insightful.
Coding & Development Tools
Alongside exposure and curation, feedback from others and mentorship can further refine taste. The creative fields have long used critique sessions, whether in design studios, writing workshops, or art school critiques, as a way to calibrate one’s judgment. Hearing thoughtful opinions on what works or falls flat in a piece can attune you to nuances you missed. Over time, you learn to see your work more objectively and adjust your taste with a keener eye. Many creatives also credit mentors or role models who exemplified great taste and pushed them to elevate their standards. Tasting “with” someone more experienced can accelerate your own development, much like a sommelier training an apprentice’s palate.
British designer and creative director Samuel Ross also shares some good insights, reflecting on his creative journey from growing up surrounded by craft and industrial design to building a career shaped by intention. He talks about how the most consistent creatives don’t just rely on inspiration, but on discipline, daily rituals, and a deep commitment to the work.
Humans Will Always Make the Difference
Read The Big Flat Now if you're interested in how the internet has rewired creativity, culture, and attention. The article is about how the internet has flattened our experience of culture, time, and space, making everything feel equally present, equally important, and instantly accessible. Jack Self explores how this shift has changed the way we create, consume, and connect. In a world where all content competes for attention on the same level, creativity becomes about standing out in sameness. But while this flatness can lead to chaos and polarization, it also opens up new ways to connect, mobilise, and reshape culture if we use it with intention.
“To make stuff, you gotta be delusional.” And when you’re delusional, you need people around you that trust you. - Tyler the Creator
In the age of AI, the creative world is overflowing with content. Art, memes, videos, much of it is starting to look and feel the same. Copy after copy. Perhaps taste remains a human strength because it leads culture forward, while AI can only respond to what already exists. We’re still the best pattern recognisers. We question them and challenge them. And, we don’t just spot trends, we also shape them. The strongest creatives use taste to move into unfamiliar territory. They take risks that may feel odd or uncertain at first and explore what those choices mean over time. That willingness to lead, rather than follow, is what opens new aesthetic horizons.
This takes imagination, courage, and a willingness to be wrong in the pursuit of the new. In an age of AI-generated everything, we’re the ones scanning culture, sensing what’s emerging, and feeding the machine with better questions. AI is shaped by past data. It can build on established ideas, but it won’t be the first to define new taste. People, on the other hand, sense when it’s time to break away from what’s familiar and push against a trend.
Being a tastemaker means introducing new ideas and helping others see value and beauty before it becomes obvious. That willingness to challenge what’s accepted and set new standards is a human skill, rooted in creativity, judgment, and leadership. That’s where our value sits: not just reacting, but guiding. Creatives become inputs themselves, tastemakers, trend-trackers, translators of cultural shifts. The richer the references, the clearer the creative eye. AI can churn things out, but we’re the ones who bring change, who decide what’s worth evolving and nurturing. We will continue shaping creativity not just by using AI, but by deciding how it is trained, what it produces, and where human judgment must guide it. Discernment helps us decide what deserves attention and gives direction in a world saturated with options. Ultimately, we still rely on people to determine what is worth listening to, reading, or engaging with. As AI creates more content, the value of human judgment becomes even more important.
That’s what we celebrate: the power of individual taste to shift perspective and change the whole paradigm.
Written by Debora Deva
Debbie is a writer, art director, and multidisciplinary creative at TOML Collective. With a background in advertising, she brings fresh perspectives to the journal — aiming to educate, question, and spark new ideas.
Get in touch with debora@tomlcollective.com