What is taste and how can you develop it?

Hey just a heads up this blog is heavily inspired by Emil Kowalski, Josh W. Comeau, Manu Arora tweet's, blogs or videos.

With my experiences and how I improved my taste of design. And how you can too.

Also if you like this blog do its a reaction or comment down below or follow me on my socials

You must be thinking what it can be? Is it something people born with? Is it something only creative people know? Is it something only special people thing?

And the answer is NO its not its not something you born with and nor its a super power

So what it is exactly taste is

Its something i call Intuition A intuition of this doesn't feel right A intuition of something is off A intuition of this can be improved i believe

Yeah thats it.

And the best part, You can train yourself to be intuitive and in this blog i'll go through the process, importance of intuition, how to practice it and how to implement it.

selfish auto-plug coming

Hey i'm ram, and i'm a developer coding over 3 years now.
If you are interested more in my journey then read How to be me blog

I'm a full stack developer, but I never tried doing frontend seriously. But i used to have this intuition of this can be improved or i don't like this thing i should do that instead and my intuition was coming from because I had a background in graphic designing and video editing, I naturally had a better taste for design by default. (developed over 2 year of span)

However, that taste is not something I acquired just because I had done graphic design or video editing.

The taste I have acquired is because my eye was trained over time by actually consuming good content from great designers, reading design theories and design patterns, and understanding what makes a good design.

What makes a composition so good in a video, what is framing, what is cinematic and what is cheap.

And no you don't need to learn graphic designing, video editing for that and not even need to learn design concepts or theory to get started

And also It's not a very mathematical thing, but in this blog, I will tell you things that will make you more intuitive.

A lot of people think that taste is a personal preference.

If that were true, there would be no good or bad design, as it would just be everyone's personal preference.

Someone could have added a red background on their blog or a green background with yellow text, justifying it as their personal preference.

Therefore, we cannot agree that taste is purely a personal preference because whenever you see a good design, everyone admires it.

Everyone likes the good design.

If we take the example of Linear, or Apple's products, you will notice a consistent sense of design.

There is a distinct taste in every single thing.

Apple's optimistic UI, for instance, is the best I have seen so far.

And Linear's animations are among the greatest, because there is something in their taste that makes them stand out and feel good.

Same goes to artist like da Vinci most of us agree that he was a great artist.

So we can say taste is not a personal preference.

If you look at the example of my first portfolio website, you would notice it was just weird.

It was awful.

You can clearly see the flaws: bad gradients, and the worst color harmony imaginable.

The typography was not that great.

It was not following any design rules or patterns.

But when I improved my craft and my design sense, I realized how I could improve it further.

You can see my current portfolio as a reference.

I created several portfolios in between. I made around six to seven portfolios before making this current one.

So, I know what really goes into a good portfolio design, or design in general.

Taste is a skill that you can train that you can practice and be better at it.

Why Taste Matters is a question that is quite easy, or perhaps quite difficult, to answer. Because nowadays, due to AI, everyone is just shipping software.

And nowadays, people are expecting software to work because of AI. Previously, the philosophy was, "Software should work."

But nowadays, people are accepting that software will work because of AI, which is partially true. Most people have now agreed on one thing: that software just works.

Now, what is the differentiator between all this software?

There are tens or hundreds of pieces of software doing the exact same thing. How can you differentiate between good and bad software?

And the answer is: it is design, how it feels, and how easy it is to use.

It is the differentiator.

Your taste in designing a product will determine how people are going to use it. That is why taste is important. That is why taste is the differentiator.

Companies are now starting to realize that in order to stand out, they need to improve their designs.

Because nowadays, they need to have a great product. A great product requires great intuition, and great intuition requires great taste. To have great taste it require great consumption of great designs.

But how can you actually improve your taste?

The simple answer is to consume. Consume good designs. It is as simple as that.

You need to surround yourself with great work.

If you are a designer or a front-end developer, look at great designs and great front-ends.

If you are a writer, then read great books.

Expose yourself to great work that is how you will learn what greatness looks and feels like.

Because if you don't know what the end goal is, or how it should look, you probably won't reach there anytime soon.

But if you know what you need to be like, it's really easy to reach that point.

Because you are clear, you know steps one, two, three, and four, and that's how you will get there.

Find people who are great at what they do in your field, and try to emulate them as much as possible.

Surround yourself with those people, their work, their designs, and their greatness. Listen their podcasts, follow them on their social media, subscribe to their newsletters, and, in short, stalk them and try to replicate them as much as you can.

But do not post about it on social media, of course. Otherwise, you will be humiliated so badly.

In the beginning, you just copy because you do not know what you need to do. The first step is just to copy.

For example, when I was building the front end, I was trying to copy a lot of designs that I saw on Pinterest. I copied it pixel by pixel and tried to understand why it was good.

Eventually, things will start clicking in your brain.

You might realize, "I do not need this roundness. I need this specific roundness of twenty-four pixels for this height and width component. I probably will not use a border, but I will use a ring because that looks sharper."

You will start to notice patterns when you begin to copy things.

So this is as simple as just copying and starting.

Then you will develop this intuition, and therefore, you will develop your taste.

Once you develop your taste, its really easy ride The more you consume, the better you will become at having a great taste.

And when you are copying things, do not tag them as good or bad.

Instead of relying on gut feelings, try to rationalize things: why this specific thing looks good or why this specific thing looks really bad.

You will need to have a counter-reasoning for every single thing.

Otherwise, you won't really feel the difference.

You will think, "This is looking good," or "This is looking bad," but in your head, you cannot pinpoint why it is looking bad.

When I study a design, I look closely at the details, trying to understand why they are there.

Whenever I visit an excellent website, I examine several things: the amount of white space, how much breathing room the text spacing provides, the quantity of text used, the way shadows are implemented, the psychological meaning of those elements, the types of colors utilized, the color theories behind those choices, why certain things are subtle, and why others are flat. I really delve into these details.

Also, if you are a designer, don't just use apps, study them and interact with them to understand why the interaction feels good.

If you are a front-end developer, explore websites, observe the micro-interactions, try to replicate them, and analyze why they look much better than the others you have seen so far.

You need to cultivate a mindset of thinking deeply about what makes something great.

Go beyond the surface level, be curious, consume a lot of things, and rationalize why they work.

You will need to start by finding your inspiration and resources.

I will provide some websites, and people from which you can jumpstart.

It is my personal list. The core idea will remain the same.

This is the most important step.

You can't learn great design or great front end by just watching someone else do it for you or by watching some YouTube videos you will need to start doing it yourself.

You need to figure out why it looks good and how you can replicate it.

You need to start tweaking things.

Otherwise, it's like you cannot learn guitar by just watching a YouTube video, but by watching and implementing it

If you really want to be good at it, you will need to start practicing, not just by watching, but by actually doing it.

When I was in Bangalore, working on my portfolio site, I was actually in a meeting.

I was not working alone or listening to music

There were two people in the meeting: Dishant and Raj.

I was designing the hero section.

I was showing them what I had built so far, and Dushant and Raj were criticizing my work.

They offered suggestions like, "You can improve this," or "I don't like that."

They were simply providing feedback on the portfolio website I was building. And the result you can see how good it turned out to be.

What I wanted to say is that a good critique will help you out immensely in this journey because you yourself will be putting a lot of hours into your work.

You might think whatever you are creating is super good, but it's probably mediocre.

In the beginning, it will feel like you have done enough and that it should look good. But that is not the case.

A good critique is the right person who will go through your trials and errors and give you feedback so that you can improve further.

Now, if you don't have someone who can judge your work, you can post it on social media, and people will do it for you.

You can tag me or other designers and people who you admire.

In the beginning, you won't really have good feedback. But that's a good thing because you are in the beginner phase. If everyone is praising it, then what's the point?

So, initially, there will be a lot of critiques. A lot of people will find issues, which is totally fine.

That happened with me. That will happen with you too. It happens with all great designers, and it will happen in the future as well.

So, if someone is criticizing your work, take it as motivation to improve further, not as a hate, because only critiques will allow you to grow super far, unlike some random tutorial that you just copy-pasted to make a pixel-perfect design.

Taste doesn't matter much if you don't care about your work. The best people at any craft are that good, because they care.

They go that extra mile and they don't stop until they are truly satisfied with the result.

Here's your resources

Websites:

1. a-fresh
2. Framer Marketplace
3. Refero
4. Pintrest
5. Land Book
6. Lapa Ninja
7. 21st Dev Templates
8. Landingfolio
9. Bentogrids
10. Shadcnblocks
11. Mobbin
12. 60fps
13. Godly
14. Ramxcodes Pinterest WEB UI List

People:

• Emil Kowalski
• Manu Arora
• Henry Heffernan
• Mariana Castilho
• Lochie Axon
• Nanda
• SJ Zhang
• Sam Selikoff
• Rauno Freiberg

I've provided you my list now what to do?

There's a little homework for you

Find a design,

Figure out Why you like it (Be Specific) not just "it looks good".

After that try to replicate that once done with that now go through your past work and see if you can improve it.

When i got to learn out gradient, inset shadow, ring, box shadow i heavily started using it

And that is all for this blog.

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