Developing taste is easy, actually

[0:00]There's an entire cultural conversation now around the idea of having taste. Tech firms are desperate to integrate people into their creative departments who are tasteful. A new generation is exposed to more and more online and learning how to decipher it. And contrary to popular belief, developing taste is easy. And in this video, we're going to talk about how to find your taste because while it is easy, it is not innate. It is completely learned and it is a lifelong journey, but one you can really enjoy. All it takes to improve, find it for yourself, is just to start. In this video, we're going to talk about the foundations of taste, frameworks for finding your own. Learning how to critique and decide if things are good and bad, in a society that's taught us not to. We're going to talk about how your taste is reflected in your decisions. How to really find your taste in the real world and the progression of establishing taste over time. I'm excited for it. Hope you all enjoy the ride. Let's lock in. We're in this time where tech in particular has discovered taste and finally has some value in it. Before it was almost a counter-signaler to have any care about anything in the world except for technological goal. But now in a world that's more visual than ever, where people have more standards than ever, and where content is educating them more than ever, taste is ultra important. We see everything from Claude positioning its entire brand in the AI space based on taste. Doing their pop-ups to large acclaim. Now exposing the tech world to marketing the rest of us have seen for decades. The financial brands like a quarter has done, where they've applied interesting visuals and the basics of creative direction to create something tasteful and unique. That better reflects their product and helps differentiate it from the old guard. But how do you actually learn it? And I want to talk about the foundation. There are two levels to the foundation. One is the concepts of human perception, and then second is the foundational knowledge of what's been established through history. And these all both play a role with each other. But we're going to break all the fundamentals of taste into a couple core categories. Visual, audio, and experience in particular. And then in categories like books, fashion, and music. But it's important to talk about the visual nature of things because this is a framework from which taste starts. So if you're have ever been into photography, you've heard of the rule of thirds. I'm going to use this as an example, as there are a number of basically immutable laws that are around us that help determine if we like something, whether we know it or not. The composition of a photo, the grid system, which controls typography and the layout of how anything visual we see, whether we find it appealing or not, whether it just feels wrong or feels unprofessional or just resonates without even knowing. And these have been quantified over time. If you look at books like Chico's The New Typography, you look at Swiss poster design, you look at all of the best photos or award-winning over time. They follow a set of loose rules where things that abide by them naturally look good. The same thing goes for color. There are certain colors that are more appealing to the human eye, that make us feel certain ways. It's ingrained into our nature, and there will always be outliers or disagreement. But the fundamentals of whether something is good or not often come from how it is enjoyed. And if you want a foundation to begin to understand what is tasteful and not, and develop your own opinions about this, you need to get a layer of this from which you can engage. Basically an educational layer, we'll call it the foundations. So if you take books, you take fashion, and you take music. Throughout history, there are a number of popular, objectively tasteful things in all of those categories. And developing a foundational knowledge of it, of knowing what they are, knowing why it was popular, you begin to build out a framework and a groundwork for yourself. Starting with design, if we put the four categories out there, design, literature, music, fashion. Design is fundamental for understanding taste because a lot of this has been covered. A lot of people have spent a lot of time achieving different looks and feels that help us decipher the world around us. That almost all visual patterns and styles we see fall into. My first real introduction to this was when I was in college and I took graphic design. And I had an intro to graphic design class and the textbook that we had was Meg's history of graphic design, which you can just buy. But why this was important is over the course of a year of doing this 101 class, we're exposed to all the different periods of design. And so if you go to that book and you can skip the Sumerian texts and the history of the first with the Gutenberg press and all that, and you can start with the key periods, you can look at defining visuals like Rococo and Baroque, the styles of the ornate medieval era. Look at Art Nouveau and the illustration that came from it. And then really look at in the 20th century, the visuals that define the world we're in now. Art Deco, Bauhaus, experimental things like the Memphis movement, Swiss design, Fruger Arrow. If you look in a book like this and you go through these different design periods, you're going to have a fundamental understanding of what looks good and doesn't. And you're going to have a vernacular with which you can understand the visuals that you're presented with. And same thing in classic literature, classic music, classic fashion. If you want to have a foundation, once a week, I want you to do one thing from one of those categories. Understand a new period of design, have a new classic album, whether it's from classical music or the Beatles or Jimmy Hendrix or whatever it is that you've heard of or you can find or a top thing, a prolific book, and engage with it. And what we're going to do is we're going to enter in our second category, the framework. And as you're looking to uplevel your taste, one thing that's definitely worth focusing on is upleveling your writing. If you've ever wanted to improve your writing for content of all kinds, from newsletters to LinkedIn to videos, then I recommend you check out this free resource called 20 Ways to Craft Irresistible Content from HubSpot and my guy Sam Par. This guide has 20 battle-tested writing tips you can apply to hook readers and make better content. It covers everything from finding ideas and writing headlines, to editing techniques and the copy work exercise that the pros use to sharpen their skills. My favorite part is the storytelling technique section. They break down proven patterns for writing and how to hook people and keep them engaged throughout your content, whether written or video. Whether you're writing a newsletter, LinkedIn post, or a video script like I do, these techniques help you structure your content so people actually hang around to finish it. If you want to rise above the written AI sludge that we're seeing on all platforms, and sharpen your writing skills, you can get this free guide at the link in the description. And thanks so much to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. When you engage with these things, the objectively tasteful, the things that exist in the world that we, as humanity, have decided we're interesting and good, you need to begin to think about how you feel about it. What is your opinion of it? So first, ask yourself, why was this appreciated? Why do people like it? Why do they think it's a classic? Be able to articulate that. Then think about, do you appreciate it? Do you like it and do you agree, and why? Or do you not like it, and why? And you'll find that your discovery becomes interesting. Instead of going and listening to whatever the latest album is that comes up on your Spotify, you're diving into some of the classics that exist. The originations of whatever genre you like, the earliest of house music. Begin to put in the context all the things around you. And when we start to ask those questions, why do people like this and appreciate it? Why do I like it and appreciate it? You open yourself up to the world of taste. And it's easy for the rest of your life when you're making those decisions, you're picking, picking what you do before sleep. Are you going to scroll your phone or are you going to read a book? Are you going to pick the same music you always listen to and it's on auto, or are you going to choose a classic album? When you go to buy a new item of clothing, are you going to look at what McQueen did in that category and do some research about it and watch a YouTube video first, or just get the same thing from Zara? But if you start making those decisions and thinking about it, you're building the foundation of taste. And this framework leads you into the ability to have critique, to see anything and based on the body of knowledge you have, what is people consider good, and what you think about it, is it good or bad? And a matrix with which to look at this is composition, effectivity, and vibes. Anything that you engage with, any whether it's choosing, do you like this couch, do you like this song, do you like this thing? You think of it from your perspective. How is it put together? When you begin to objectively think about, is this quarter zip better than that quarter zip? What is its composition? Is it well made? Does the material feel good? Does it feel cheap or expensive? Was it handmade or machine made? You begin to get into these questions around the composition of a thing, just as much as if you hear a piece of music that sounds well produced or has layers to it, or makes you feel in a certain way. Everything starts with this composition, even when you read literature, does its pros resonate with you? Does it have that level of quality? It's not the end all, but it's a thing to think about inside your critique. And then the effectivity, does it actually work? Does the quarter zip look good on me? Does it keep me warm? Do I like the music? Does it make people want to dance? Do they enjoy it? Do they feel emotion from it? And then we have the vibes meter, the intangible. Do you just like it? Does it have something special to it? Is it unique? Because things can be well composed, can make you feel something, but they're just missing that last segment. And the three of those things together form the basis of how you can critique something, whether it's excellent, whether it needs work and then which area it needs work in. Hey, everything's right, but the vibes are off. Hey, the vibes are amazing, but it's not actually well done in any way, shape or form. These are all levels that exist. You can describe almost any piece of writing, music or design underneath and begin to understand why you like it or not. And being able to do that critique is really important, so you can actually articulate what's good and bad. But then the difference between someone who's beginning to understand taste and understand the world around them, and someone who is tasteful comes into your decisions. Do you live your taste? And really, every single decision you make from the goods that are in your house, to the clothes that you wear, to what you choose to eat, to the topics you choose to discuss with other people is all a basically game of give and take. Of are you letting this decision be driven by your sense of taste, or are you giving in in some regard? And this is where you begin to really think critically about everything you engage in. You start to realize that, hey, you know, I'm sacrificing a certain level of quality in the clothes that I box. I've always wanted to have an outfit where I can have closet where I can have all these outfits, but really, in reality, if I wanted to make the tasteful choice, if I wanted to make objectively the right choice, I would be getting longer lasting, more classic things and less of them. And there's a big difference between knowing you should do it and acting on it. And to begin to be considered a tasteful person, to begin to live that taste, to better understand those items when you make that decision. When you say it's actually worth it for me to not get the dopamine from little purchases, I'm going to save for the one good thing. Or I'm going to think really critically about my decisions. People ask a lot about the product versus brand series that I do, and why we know so much about blenders or leather or knives or whatever it is. And it's because I intimately am interested in making the best choice and knowing about it and caring about it. And I'd rather spend hours asking friends and looking at what best knife I'm going to do, if I'm going to spend $200 on it than not. And consumed with that idea, and consumed with the understanding of things that are good or bad. And it's gone into my career, someone who's done product development, who does marketing, who makes content about things. It's worth it for me to understand it, and I want to have as large of a framework about as many things as I humanly can, and I want to be able to argue about it and critique it and give an opinion on it. It's become really important inside my life, and it also led me over time to get hundreds of millions of views for people looking to me for my opinion. And the best exercise for this is spending more time in thrift. If you are able to go into a thrift store and put a complete outfit together that look good and would be completely relevant, you're doing that through taste, not through buying the answer. Anyone can go spend top dollar to buy something that will look amazing. But can you, based on only the things that you know in your mind about how fashion should be, or your feel, the composition, effectivity, like we talked about before, go into an environment that's essentially chaos where everything is been devalued and put something together for cheap. And once you start doing that, same thing with how you compose your home, you're able to save yourself a significant amount of money. And then you're also able to have that exercise of remove the labels from it, remove the designer names, remove who's recommending it, and let me put something together based on my style. It's a great exercise to do. Go actually put that outfit together for the weekend, go furnish the new apartment, whatever it is. And then that's the end of the foundation. Then there's the next layer to this. Once it's absorbed in your life, you begin thinking about it, you begin trying things on it, you will begin to notice you think critically about everything around you. You become more valuable at work. You understand more of the world. You have a better eye for things. People respect you more naturally. But to get really good at it, you have to defend it. Real taste has stakes between work, content, if you make it, and your friends. You'll begin to know when you have taste, and it's defensible because people are going to ask you. They're going to be like, that guy has great outfits. That person's always had an interesting thing to say. What do they think about X? You'll begin to know you have it when people come to you for it. But if you want to get really good at it, you want to actually feel comfortable in it, you can't just have that innately. You need to put your opinions out there for others to judge and then to have those conversations. And I have those conversations a lot with friends. I have opinions on things, and I want their opinions on them, and I want to go back and forth on them, whether that's what coffee machine they chose to get, or how they feel about whatever album or piece of content on social media, or an idea. It's an important part of discourse and how you can engage in a real conversation with a lot of people that aren't just about current events. I would encourage you, if you really want to get those opinions formed and put them out there in some way, whether that's the written word, whether that's making content, whether that's a lot of aggressive conversations with real people, you have to be able to defend those things. Until you're able to articulate that matrix we have before about something's composition, how effective it is, and its vibes, and be able to go back and forth with someone and help convince them into your point of view, or be able to accept that, hey, I actually need to change my framework. That elevates you to another level of understanding. And that's why people who work in certain industries where everything is one of those decisions, and there's conversation around it. If you work deep inside fashion, you're going to have a different regard for what fashion is, than if you're just a consumer, you begin to get into these frameworks. And then there comes experience. You can only get so far from the world that you're in. A lot comes from traveling all around. I learned an awful lot in the time I've spent in China about how things are made and put together and the quality of them and what to respect and not. That's changed my opinions a lot on everything from electronics to material. The more you experience in the world, and the more you engage in, look at it from that level. Like whenever I go to a country, when we were in Italy over the summer, I want to only listen to the music that was popular then in Italy. In popular last few years, immerse myself in what's considered good there and what people like and how it's made. And I've learned a lot and got engaged in a lot of interesting things in the process. Same thing when you go look at what are the coffee shops to attend to, or what are the clothing brands people are wearing. You can begin to actually learn a lot about what that looks like globally and it will shape your opinion. You can only get that through experience and that comes in time. And then the end, this is a progression. This is a lifelong experience. Like the title of this video says, having taste is actually easy to begin to look at things from this lens and decide what you like or not and build a foundation around it, any person can do. Now becoming amazing at it is a lifelong journey, is a thing that's going to change constantly. But it's about having that curious mindset, about talking about ideas instead of about other people or about other events. It's about thinking about every decision you make critically and acting on it in your life. It's going to be something that carries with you forever. And it can you can start whether you're starting when you're 50, or you start when you're 12, it doesn't matter. It just matters if it keeps going and progressing over time and that you learn. And you'll find where you want your lines to be. It's going to be different for every person. The important part is you think about it critically and can articulate it, and then you care. As I've mentioned before, I'll be on tour in the new year. You can check out the dates of where we're going to be live down below in the description. I have a webinar coming up. It's around January 13th on creative strategy in the new year. And if you want to apply principles of taste to work for organic and paid content, we're going to talk a lot about that. Just have a big community call where we have discussions about what happens in this space. And I'm gearing up to release another video about the new year and working your plan for the new year looks like, so you can expect that coming soon.