Taste and Craft
I find it quite interesting that my timeline is filled with conversations and articles on taste vs craft.
Interesting because I assumed that has been the end goal of us designers and makers all along. To do work that we can truly be proud of.
To me, it’s strange that we needed an AI rush to inform us about taste and craft.
As far back as 2020, I had a document for all the designers whose work showed so much taste. From the likes of Gleb Kuznetsov, Tobias Van Schneider, Sofia Papadopolou, Cuberto, and Dennis Snellenberg to Pontus Wellgraf, Hend Elgohary, and Taamanae.
Each time I saw their work, I experienced what I termed “design-gasm.” Yes, I coined the word in 2020. I woke up every day to the works of Wellgraf (I slept on that man’s YouTube channel) and eased myself into sleep with the works of Gleb. I was drunk on the works of Minh Pham.
All these people had a tab on my PC that was always open for months on end. I watched every interview that Gleb was on. He only had about 3-4, by the way.
I stalked the works of Gleb and TVS on every social media platform.
One major thing that happened was that it only increased my misery. What do I mean?
What I began to notice was this:
I had a vivid picture in my head of what I wanted to achieve, but not the craft to match it. I learned UI animation to express some of those ideas, then my personal goalpost shifted again. This has been a recurring theme.
Many years later, my craft is still catching up to all my constant, vivid, imaginative ideas. I still have those vivid imaginations. As of yesterday, Jan 21, 2026, I had a surreal, vivid, crazy idea I want to implement. My craft might not be able to match it. And so, I always end up stripping everything down to the most basic version I can pull off right now.
Most of my projects are stripped-down, basic versions of the initial idea I had. For example, the Diabetes Nigeria project. I had such a grand idea for that project.
Your craft will still demand far more than those 10,000 hours. And sometimes I wonder what if, just what if, craft never catches up to taste?
Craft is gonna take years… but taste? Taste you must build.
The lessons
You cannot compare your year 1 to someone else’s year 5.
At some point, you will have to form a team of two people. You, alone, by yourself, will struggle to do work that has taste. It’s just too many tiny details to consider. We don’t like to admit it, but to produce a single tasteful work, you need a minimum of three skills coming together in symphony. The result doesn’t look like multiple skills came together, but the truth is that it was multiple skills.
For so many years, it will look like nothing is changing or nothing is happening. Almost like you’ve hit a ceiling. Like you became dumb overnight. You just keep showing up and don’t slip into the mindset of doing the bare minimum to get by. You actually should be deeply troubled that your craft needs improving.
It's a skill issue. It all still boils down to a skill issue. Increase the sacrifice.