Key takeaways
- Taste is built through accumulation. It develops through sustained exposure to great work, and to work that fails, plus an understanding of why.
- Input matters more than instinct. Curiosity that extends beyond advertising, into film, architecture, music, fashion, literature and sport, produces the strongest creative points of view.
- Recognising good work is learnable. Applying that knowledge under pressure is not. Knowing what to do with taste, in the room, with a client pushing for something safer, is a separate skill.
- Conviction is the part that can’t be taught directly. Taste without the courage to back it is just preference. That courage tends to come from having seen creative bravery work and from accumulating enough failures to stop fearing them.
- The stakes for taste have risen. In a market producing more content than ever, audiences filter instinctively for work that feels true and discard what feels manufactured.
- Taste now applies beyond design and copy. Strategy, influencer selection, platform choices and partnership decisions are all creative acts that benefit from a developed point of view.
In creative communications, taste is the thing everyone recognises and nobody can quite define. It is the instinct that tells you when a headline is one word too long. The feeling that a visual treatment is trying too hard. The quiet confidence to strip something back when every commercial instinct says to add more.
Some people seem to arrive with it. Others appear to develop it over time. The real question for anyone building a career in this industry is whether taste is something you are born with, or something you can genuinely learn.
The honest answer is both, and neither fully satisfies.
Taste is built through repetition
The romantic version of creative talent imagines taste as innate. A handful of people simply see the world differently, and the rest are playing catch-up. That version is comforting if you are one of the chosen few, and fairly discouraging if you are not.
The more useful truth is that taste is built through accumulation. It develops through obsessive exposure to great work, and an equal exposure to work that fails and understanding why. Every creative who develops a strong point of view has done the reading. They have studied the references. They have spent time in rooms where standards were high and absorbed what that felt like.
You cannot shortcut this. Taste requires input. It requires curiosity that extends well beyond your immediate category, into film, architecture, music, fashion, literature, sport. The briefs that produce the most interesting work almost never come from people who only know advertising.
The part of creative judgement you cannot teach
Where it gets complicated is in the application. Knowing that something is good is learnable. Knowing what to do with that knowledge, in the room, under pressure, with a client who wants something safer, is a different skill entirely.
Taste without conviction is just preference. What separates genuinely creative communicators is the willingness to back their instincts, to advocate for the uncomfortable choice, to hold a creative position when the path of least resistance would be to give the room what it wants.
That quality, the courage behind the taste, is harder to teach. It tends to come from having seen creative bravery work, from working alongside people who model it, and from accumulating enough failures to stop fearing them.
Why creative taste matters more now
In an industry producing more content than at any point in history, the gap between average and excellent has never been more visible, or more consequential. Audiences are sophisticated. They have seen everything. They filter instinctively for work that feels true and discard what feels manufactured.
That raises the stakes for taste across every discipline, not just design and copy, but strategy, influencer selection, platform decisions, partnership choices. All of it is a creative act. All of it benefits from a developed point of view.
You can learn taste. But only if you are genuinely paying attention.
FAQs
1. Is creative taste something you’re born with, or can it be learned? Both play a role. Recognising quality work is learnable through sustained exposure to great and failed work. The harder part, having the conviction to act on that judgement under pressure, tends to develop through experience rather than direct teaching.
2. How do you actually develop better creative taste? Through obsessive, wide-ranging exposure. That means studying references well outside your own category, film, architecture, music, fashion, literature and sport, and spending time around people and work with genuinely high standards.
3. Why does taste matter beyond design and copywriting? Because most communications decisions are creative acts. Strategy, influencer selection, platform choices and partnership decisions all benefit from a developed point of view, not just visual and verbal output.
About the author
Joe Murgatroyd | Partner & Creative Director
As creative director, Joe is responsible for delivering creative excellence across the agency. With over a decade of experience in the world of PR, specialising in the sport industry, Joe has amassed some enviable experience after working for some of the world’s most recognisable brands.
An alumnus of Sport Industry Group’s prestigious ‘Sports Industry NextGen Leader’ programme, he now shares his wisdom as a frequent contributor to industry publications such as The Drum, PR Week and Creative Moment.
