Taste is picking what you like. This is knowing what will land.

AI for sure can't replace human taste in design. But what is taste, exactly?

Taste sounds like you know what's cool and what's not. But that's not what makes a good designer.

I'd call it something else. Handwriting.

The trace a designer leaves without trying. The pull toward a certain rhythm, a certain tension, a certain way of placing things. It comes from years of drawing. Years of looking. Years of your hand moving a particular way across paper.

It's like hatching in a pencil sketch. No matter how much I study technique, I have my own stroke. I can try to suppress it for a client's brand. It'll still be there.

Give two designers the exact same brief. The exact same references. The results will be different.

That difference is the thing.

AI can generate a correct layout in 30 seconds

But the final detail (the one that makes a brand feel like itself and nothing else) comes from the weight of a specific hand. The more experienced the hand, the harder it is for AI to catch that last 1%. And that 1% is a competitive advantage.

The designers who matter now can do two things

• Imagine which visual will highlight what makes you different. Paint the sport car pink.
• Execute it precisely. The right shade of pink. Not too much, not too little. Because if the tone is off, the whole idea falls apart.

That's not taste

Taste is picking what you like.

This is knowing what will land. And having the hand to make it land exactly right.

I still don't have the perfect word for it.

But I know it when it's missing ¯\(ツ)/¯