Ryan--

I'm a critic and journalist, not a designer (though I've worked with a lot of graphic designers and art directors). And this might be my favorite article of 2023, not just because it's so well written but because it deals with an issue few people talk about (and that's getting harder to talk about all the time).

Taste matters, in part, because your editors (or clients or employers) will have different tastes. In order to meet their needs, you need to understand those tastes. That begins with understanding what taste is, a concept that's fast falling out of favor in our feel-your-feelings age that treats all tastes as equally "good" or "valid."

Thanks so much for raising what, in my experience, is becoming a taboo subject.

Jan