Taste and intuition matter more than ever

I’ve been feeling a quiet discomfort with where parts of our industry are headed. Not with the work itself, but with the mindset behind it.

There’s a growing culture of default thinking in design. Systems are followed without question. Frameworks, tokens, checklists — all useful tools, until they become substitutes for judgment.

You’ve probably seen it too: Designers defending an 8px decision like it’s a moral stance. Feedback loops that focus more on conformity than intent, innovation, or pushing creative boundaries. It seems easier to debate spacing and systems than to sit with ambiguity.

Easier to push for pixel perfection than to explore an imperfect idea or back something that might disrupt the status quo.

Easier to critique consistency than to question whether the solution was ever compelling in the first place.

None of this is new, but it feels louder right now. As design systems mature, AI accelerates workflows, and product orgs lean into predictability, the risk (and dare I say it, the reality we now occupy) is that design feels more contrived, formulaic, bland, identical, ‘same’; more like execution than inquiry.

We default to what’s proven. We build from templates and predefined systems. We measure success by how well we fit in, how well we conform, not how well we notice what others overlook or how differentiated our methodologies, ideas, and solutions are or could be.

This isn’t a rejection of systems. They’re necessary. They create consistency, rhythm, reduce noise, and help teams move faster. But they’re not neutral — and they’re not always right.

Every system encodes a perspective. Someone, somewhere, made a decision about how it should work. And when those assumptions go unquestioned (sometimes for years). They prioritize ease over originality. They protect against chaos, but sometimes at the cost of character and expression.

When you’re working on something new (a product without precedent or a brand trying to carve out its own identity for example), there’s often no perfect pattern to follow. No safe layout. No Figma file or system to reference.

I personally try to design with tension, between structure and sensitivity, between what’s defined and what’s still emerging. I notice when a layout needs to break the grid. When a product needs to speak, not just function. When a brand needs contradiction to feel alive.

Systems can support ambition, but they can’t create it. They won’t tell you when to push further, when to follow a hunch, or when to break something on purpose. That still takes people… designers with taste, perspective, and a willingness to question the brief, not just interpret it.

It’s impossible to talk about the future of design without acknowledging AI.

AI is great at automating what systems have trained us to do. The clearer and more codified the system, the easier it is for a model to replicate. In many ways, the logic of design systems has become a perfect foundation for automation. Efficiency, consistency, and standardisation, all things machines thrive at.

But that also raises a deeper question about the role of a designer and our ability to discern when it’s time to draw outside the lines or when we need or stay the course. Because the more systemised our workflows become, the more the edges matter — the judgment calls, the creative tension, the parts that aren’t easily templated. That’s where taste and judgment really matter.

Taste isn’t just personal style. It’s the ability to know what shouldn’t be there. To sense when something’s off, even if it looks right. To reach for the unexpected, the slightly wrong, the deliberately uncomfortable. It’s how we edit, frame, and push new ideas forward.

As Virgil Abloh once put it:

“A creative only has to add a three per cent tweak to a pre-existing concept in order to generate a cultural contribution deemed innovative.”

Fast Company called it “designing for meaning, not just output.”

Studios like Comedia Design describe the “last mile” of design as the part where AI falls short, where human judgment, authorship, and cultural intuition still define the outcome.

And it’s true: AI can do 1000 things better than people — right code in seconds, rifle through the Internet for the perfect recipe, and edit this very article for grammar and spelling (and inserting far too many em dashes), but it can’t tell you what feels right or looks good, when to break the grid, or when a concept just isn’t strong enough — no matter how polished the execution.

References

• Fast Company, Why Taste Matters Now More Than Ever
  https://www.fastcompany.com/91319403/why-taste-matters-now-more-than-ever
• Comedia Design, The Last Mile of Design: Why AI Will Make Taste More Valuable, Not Less
  https://www.comediadesign.com/articles/the-last-mile-of-design-why-ai-will-make-taste-more-valuable-not-less
• Virgil Abloh, quoted in Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech (and across various interviews)
  https://www.ft.com/content/9b900321-2ab3-4ff1-a425-405ef852cdba