The barrier to producing creative work is now close to zero. Anyone with a prompt can generate a logo, a layout, a campaign. Most of it is fine. That is precisely the problem: when fine is free, the distance between fine and right is the only value left.
Taste is pattern recognition
Taste gets discussed as if it were a gift. It is not. It is the accumulated result of having seen thousands of solutions and knowing why the good ones worked. The experienced eye catches the kerning that is two percent off, the headline that is one word too long, the color that is fashionable rather than right. None of that is instinct. It is mileage.
How it is trained
- Study work that lasted. Not this year's award winners — the campaigns and identities still strong after thirty years. Ask why.
- Practice articulating. If you cannot say in one sentence why something is wrong, you do not yet know why it is wrong.
- Compare almost-identical things. Put the good version and the generated version side by side and name every difference.
- Defend choices out loud. Taste that cannot be explained to a client cannot be sold to one either.
This is why the AI transition does not flatten the industry; it steepens it. The floor rises for everyone, but the premium on the person who can look at a hundred generated options and point at the right one goes up, not down.
The machine can make a thousand versions. Somebody still has to know which one is true.
Tools will keep improving. The audience's ability to smell the generic will improve with them. Invest in the one skill that does not depreciate.