Why Good Taste is Going Out of Style
Taste rarely gets a seat at the business table. Why bother when there’s an easier, cheaper way to do things? It’s more profitable—or so they assume.
Some will even argue that taste is completely subjective… and nobody can claim theirs as better, personally I think some things can be done objectively and universally in bad taste…
Just because people won’t call it out, doesn’t mean it’s not horrible.
Why not just use some tasteless bland AI to write or voice this instead of doing it myself… would that be good enough for most people?
Does anyone care?
The right ones do… and history will remember them as being the truly brilliant minds… the ones who did something not just new and great, but did it with style, and in rebellion against common trends.
Good Taste is Hard to Find
People with truly good taste are in fact rare, and finding someone able to create something inside good taste is even more rare… I tend to consider myself as able to recognize it, even push the right buttons to build with it… but I often struggle to know how to find that missing magic piece—that’s where having a stylish creative partner with good taste helps tremendously.
But what if good taste just seems too difficult, too expensive, or too elusive?
You might be tempted to listen to all those “build a boring business” gurus, just throw all your tastes, good or bad, out the window and go with "industry best practices" or worse, look at the competition and mirror them… who needs originality when you can just copy?
Will it work? Maybe… probably… but does the world really need another boring ugly tweaked copy-pasta product to replace the last one? It’s just noise!
Building with good taste, and with meaning… now that’s cool…
But it’s starting to become somewhat of a lost art.
“Business People”
It's obvious how most things got to this place, at least, to me... I blame "business people."
Those guys?
Why?
Well... because business, at its core, wants to make money... and therefore, tends to settle into what fits neatly into the machine.
Whatever serves the current system has the least resistance.
Businesses rarely seek to carve new paths because forging something original takes effort, risk, and patience—things very few want to pay for anymore.
Some efficiencies are needed... I know with my products I often seek the most efficient routes, and sometimes this is a good thing… also, when you have to scale, and design for manufacturing (D.F.M.) there are some things where you just have to compromise, or it will never be made more than once.
That’s life.
The problem though, is that business isn't life. In fact... when business starts to take over your life, and money becomes the goal… it can be soul-crushing.
Creativity Builds, Business Ruins Things
Efficiency wins... predictability reigns... the goal is to optimize, not to dream.
Then mass market reach took this mindset and cranked it up to 11. It built a world where everything had to be faster, cheaper, and more uniform.
The handcrafted became mass-produced, the intimate became standardized, the organic became refined chemicals and mechanically produced slop.
What was once made with care, with artistry, with some trace of the human spirit, was now stripped down to its most functional form. A product. A number. A cog in an endless assembly line of sameness.
Every industry, and every market, eventually somehow narrowed its focus to what is proven, what is scalable, what is easy to sell.
Innovation isn’t dead—it’s just been sanitized, streamlined into a predictable drum of slight variations on the same themes. "Disruption" becomes a buzzword, but real change, the kind that shakes foundations and rewires how people think, is inconvenient. It’s also costly, which makes investors nervous.
Bad Taste with Quick Returns
Anything that doesn’t fit into an existing mold is often labeled impractical, unnecessary, or, worst of all, unprofitable, especially by those who consider themselves “industry professionals.” Maybe they had a few “exits”, maybe they are rich…. but that doesn’t mean you should listen to them.
Business people and especially investors scoff at what they don’t immediately understand... they roll their eyes at ideas that don’t promise instant returns... If something doesn’t look like it can be packaged, marketed, and scaled, it’s dismissed as a waste of their time.
That's ok... we don't need their opinions. Those are not the ones that matter.
The world has taught business to hate friction, and it's shaped a world where goodness is sacrificed for convenience, and where the goal isn’t to create something meaningful but to make something that moves off the shelf.
And in the process, we lost taste. We lost the willingness to make things that look and feel good—not just because aesthetics sell, but because beauty has value on its own.
But What do People Want?
Steve Jobs once said…
"It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them."
His genius proved it—the iPhone wasn’t a response to demand—it created it.
Yet today, design still mirrors what people expect, what they already know from a competitor’s product.
It’s easier to create a product that has a known audience who’s already trained on how to use, operate, or expect things from it… so it’s stripped of soul, A/B-tested into mediocrity, and polished into something safe, sterile, and mass-approved.
But when form follows only function, when ideas are created for what’s expected… you get uninspired boring clutter, and the feature creep rat-race between brands we all hate.
So what’s the solution?
Build Novel Things That Create Feelings
Good taste can create good feelings… and that’s the difference…
Between business and art.
Between industry and expression.
Between those who follow the path of least resistance and those who are willing to carve a new one, no matter how inconvenient it may be.
I came to realize... and hopefully you can see as well... that sometimes what looks like a waste of time or “re-inventing the wheel” isn’t about the wheel at all. It’s about the experience... it's about considering taste... it's about the connection... the feeling it sparks in someone’s soul.
Not everything needs to be efficient, logical, or built to serve the system. Some things should exist simply to move people—to reach them in ways no blueprint ever could.
Like…
The architect or designer/artist who ignores trends to create awe and wonder…
A chef who dares to present his latest entrée that defies convention…
An inventor who creates with a vision that few can understand…
or the writer who pens her true thoughts, and does not care who will judge…
These are the ones who make life feel rich, electric, human—they create the things that make us feel alive...
The most memorable and valuable things don’t come from proven formulas… they come from good taste.
Alright, that was all for now Rebel.
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Hope to see you there!
- Rick & Ani
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