Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of artists, many of the best, are common rabble.
Not artistically, they aren't.
Art isn't an expression of class hierarchy, so phrases like "common rabble" don't really mean anything.
You Had No Taste Before AI
141–150 of 201 posts
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#142As someone who works with a lot of creatives, I've noticed people tend to get really defensive and self-righteous anytime "taste" comes up, on both sides - the haute designer-types vs. the scrappy I-can-do-it types. So I won't be surprised if this post is controversial. But it's insightful. Having poor taste (or more charitably, having no taste) can be covered up or ignored by the ability to choose from a pre-curated…
Like it or not, tastes change. Both the personal and society's tastes. If you look back through the past, you can see some horrid design choices. Thus, some designs we think as awesome right now, will be seen as horrid to our descendants. So if that's true, what if taste is social? And if it's social, then... well, all people have is peer pressure taste. And your words show the truth in this, to a degree. Pre-curated…
No. Tastes are subjective; beauty is objective. This is what permits us to say whether someone has good or bad taste. If it were purely subjective, then it would be impossible to make these claims. They would be nothing more than expressions of power, whether by the majority or some authority.
Fads and fashions occur, sure, but they aren't always aligned with good taste. And you can have varieties of beauty (why can't two different styles both be beautiful in two different ways?). I also wouldn't exaggerate the divergence. Some of what you've written is cliche rather than history.
Unity, the true, the good, and the beautiful are but three different perspectives on being and a matter of objective reality. The discernment or subjective condition of the tastes of a person have to do with how one receives reality rather than reality itself. Reality is, after all, received according to the mode of the receiver.
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The most accessible design is not picking colors at all, but letting users or user agents pick the color scheme and only providing the content.
That's conflating content and design.
Also, where else are these expectations in society? I think accessible websites are important for equitable access to content, services and tools for those with disabilities, but nobody provides "content only" designs for concert posters where the user is expected to create their own art around it. Nobody who is making a movie supplies the script as the only creative output for the market. Nobody dumps a plaintext unformatted version of a book or research paper expecting you to format it yourself. Nobody creates a comic book which consists only the speech bubbles. Nobody should be expected to produce web sites that are just content.
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some tastes change but not _all_ tastes change. This is a common misconception in conversations about taste: “some of it is subjective therefore it must all be 100% subjective and meaningless”. Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements. Universal truths, which are characterized as subjective…
Isn't that just a lot of words to say "my taste is objective / rooted in reason, other people's tastes are a crapshoot"? Can you prescribe some specific test to tell objective design aesthetics from the "groupthink" ones? If not, then what are you saying, other than "I know when I see it, but not everyone does"? Sure, there are things we do in a particular way because of manufacturability or utility considerations, a…
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Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#145Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.
Almost all the artifacts considered beautiful from the last 500 years came from the use of excess profit invested into beauty and legacy.
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most accessible design is not picking colors at all, but letting users or user agents pick the color scheme and only providing the content.
Deferring such decisions to the end user is an ABSENCE of design.
Partly! And that's a good thing, IMO. E.g. providing just the content (think markdown, e.g.) and letting the end user agent render it in a standard way that the user wants is what I had in mind. Like good ole HTML from 1995 :)
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some tastes change but not _all_ tastes change. This is a common misconception in conversations about taste: “some of it is subjective therefore it must all be 100% subjective and meaningless”. Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements. Universal truths, which are characterized as subjective…
Isn't that just a lot of words to say "my taste is objective / rooted in reason, other people's tastes are a crapshoot"? Can you prescribe some specific test to tell objective design aesthetics from the "groupthink" ones? If not, then what are you saying, other than "I know when I see it, but not everyone does"? Sure, there are things we do in a particular way because of manufacturability or utility considerations, a…
When you spend a lifetime learning design you learn the difference between taste and fashion. Taste is the ability to make solid choices coherently within a system being it fashionable or not.
Fashion is just the latest system that is popular.
Tasteful people can design good things regardless of the fashionable era. Great ones can create new fashionable eras.
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Oddly, for once, English majors may actually benefit, because they may be better prepared than most to prepare prompts for the jobs of tomorrow ( mild sarcasm, coffee didn't kick in yet ).
You laugh, but I'm seen as a local/regional expert at prompt engineering in my field because of my background in technical and creative writing learned as an English major. People pay me to help them understand these tools and how to use them in their work. All I'm doing with them is logic and communication. I have zero idea how the tools work, I'm just really good at communicating in a clear and concise manner when…
Honest go god, if I laugh in this instance, it is because a good thing is happening for relatively dumb reasons ( it is the same thing with documentation -- all of a sudden, good documentation is required so that AI can go through it ).
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#149As someone who works with a lot of creatives, I've noticed people tend to get really defensive and self-righteous anytime "taste" comes up, on both sides - the haute designer-types vs. the scrappy I-can-do-it types. So I won't be surprised if this post is controversial. But it's insightful. Having poor taste (or more charitably, having no taste) can be covered up or ignored by the ability to choose from a pre-curated…
Most software I find to provide a smooth, gratifying UX has been carefully designed, but not by a designer. The Fish and Elvish shells have designs involving lots of small, tasteful choices that add up. `fd` refines the traditional Unix `find` CLI in a ton of ways that reflect "good taste" and at the same time brings it more in line with the conventional long and short options of most GNU CLI utilities, including red…
Yea coherent systems are satisfying.
Command line or Ui really has nothing to do with it. That’s about usability. Which is entirely different.
Re: You Had No Taste Before AI
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most accessible design is not picking colors at all, but letting users or user agents pick the color scheme and only providing the content.
That's conflating content and design. Also, where else are these expectations in society? I think accessible websites are important for equitable access to content, services and tools for those with disabilities, but nobody provides "content only" designs for concert posters where the user is expected to create their own art around it. Nobody who is making a movie supplies the script as the only creative output for t…
It's interesting that you provide movie posters as an example. That's literally advertising. At some point the web evolved from being a simple text-based document format to becoming animated, linkable magazines and an endless barrage of advertising. It evolved to look pretty to entertain and entice people, not to inform them.
> Nobody dumps a plaintext unformatted version of a book or research paper expecting you to format it yourself.
Have you read a novel? It's just text in paragraphs.
> Nobody should be expected to produce web sites that are just content.
I think you're taking an extreme viewpoint. Have a look at all the markdown on GitHub. Clearly markdown is great for a lot of content. It isn't great for a lot of marketing.