Author: Cathal (Catty) Berragan
Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathal-catty-berragan-8a2270a0/
If you work in tech you've probably come across the "taste" discourse.
One morning Silicon Valley woke up and decided they were done with copying each other's landing pages and that typefaces were suddenly important.
Everyone is pointing to moodboards of vintage Mercedes SLs, The Row flip flops and yohji yamamoto fits and saying "look, I have good taste."
Tech CEOs in Vineyard Vines polos have thrown the word around so much it's lost all meaning.
People have argued its importance, tried desperately to define it and, even worse, argued why their taste is better than everyone else's.
The biggest problem with the taste discourse is it misses what makes creative work good or interesting. Taste implies a consensus for what counts as a good creative choice vs a bad one, decided by gatekeepers.
Anyone working in the creative scene knows you can have excellent taste and still produce work that's completely uninteresting.
Long before the taste discourse existed you had creatives lifting their identities from the Instagram explore page to cosplay as someone with taste, pulling from the same pool of references as everyone else.
I've been in plenty of rooms (gallery parties, store openings, screenings) full of stylish, tasteful and ultimately boring people.
The word we're looking for is character.
Character is the intangible quality of someone with a completely original perspective who expresses it in their work and identity. Someone who violates narratives, subverts norms and makes stuff that divides opinion.
When you see a memorable brand identity, you're seeing the accumulation of unique experiences and references from a weirdo.
Advertising has always celebrated its eccentrics and given them a seat in the boardroom. Tech is catching up to the value of individuality, but it's overcorrected into an infatuation with a word nobody can define.
Reggie James put it best: "The problem with most tech taste is they don't dare scare the hoes nearly enough."
(Meme by VC Brags)
One morning Silicon Valley woke up and decided they were done with copying each other's landing pages and that typefaces were suddenly important.
Everyone is pointing to moodboards of vintage Mercedes SLs, The Row flip flops and yohji yamamoto fits and saying "look, I have good taste."
Tech CEOs in Vineyard Vines polos have thrown the word around so much it's lost all meaning.
People have argued its importance, tried desperately to define it and, even worse, argued why their taste is better than everyone else's.
The biggest problem with the taste discourse is it misses what makes creative work good or interesting. Taste implies a consensus for what counts as a good creative choice vs a bad one, decided by gatekeepers.
Anyone working in the creative scene knows you can have excellent taste and still produce work that's completely uninteresting.
Long before the taste discourse existed you had creatives lifting their identities from the Instagram explore page to cosplay as someone with taste, pulling from the same pool of references as everyone else.
I've been in plenty of rooms (gallery parties, store openings, screenings) full of stylish, tasteful and ultimately boring people.
The word we're looking for is character.
Character is the intangible quality of someone with a completely original perspective who expresses it in their work and identity. Someone who violates narratives, subverts norms and makes stuff that divides opinion.
When you see a memorable brand identity, you're seeing the accumulation of unique experiences and references from a weirdo.
Advertising has always celebrated its eccentrics and given them a seat in the boardroom. Tech is catching up to the value of individuality, but it's overcorrected into an infatuation with a word nobody can define.
Reggie James put it best: "The problem with most tech taste is they don't dare scare the hoes nearly enough."
(Meme by VC Brags)
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