the elusiveness of taste

Writer Gertrude Stein's definition of genius: somebody who knows who to be influenced by.

this last list is light...

Taste is not the same as correctness, though. To do something correctly is not necessarily to do it tastefully. For most things, correctness is good enough, so we skate by on that as the default. And there are many correct paths to take. You’ll be able to cook a yummy meal, enjoy the movie, build a useable product, don a shirt that fits. But taste ... See more

Attend to your influences.
I suppose this is the ur-message - to be more aware of what’s influencing you and how. Acknowledge just how much of what you think, feel and do is picked up from others, consciously and unconsciously, and try to become more conscious of more of them. Artists pay attention to this because they love their influences, while a

In early interviews with Whaley, he often talked about the internet being the magic ingredient to MSCHF: “Life is too short and the internet is too big to not make what you want.”

Evan Armstrong • The Art of Scaling Taste

Haruki Murakami, writer: If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you only think what everyone else is thinking.

Katie Dalebout • this last list is light...

Looking closely is valuable at every scale. From looking closely at a sentence, a photograph, a building, a government. It scales and it cascades — one cognizant detail begets another and then another. Suddenly you’ve traveled very far from that first little: Huh.

I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh i... See more

Craig Mod • Looking Closely Is Everything

Taste is about discovery, having interest in things, and making a lot of mistakes. It’s about trying to find the authentic set of choices that both reflect your own background, but also the choices and discoveries that you have made consciously and deliberately. It's always changing and it's also always in reflection of what everyone else is doing ... See more

Tahirah Hairston • RLT Interview #4: W. David Marx, Writer

Like many writers before me, I tend to lean on vague hand-waving when the need to define taste, or rather, good taste, arises. A common trope is to use the phrase US Supreme Court justice Stewart famously gave to describe obscenity, a similarly hard-to-describe bedfellow of taste, in 1964: “I know it when I see it.” In design, good taste can be kno... See more

Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It

Developing taste is an exercise in vulnerability: it requires you to trust your instincts and preferences, even when they don’t align with current trends or the tastes of your peers. Because while having taste is cool, taste itself reflects a certain type of uncool earnestness – a commitment to one’s own obsessions and quirks.

Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It

I’ve come to believe that developing taste is not so unlike going to therapy; it’s an inefficient, time-consuming process that mostly entails looking inward and identifying whatever already moves you.