The Rubric Has Owners Taste keeps coming up in tech.

Design has retreated to taste as its identity in the AI era. Cultivated discernment. The judgment of the qualified few.

It's a power move dressed as aesthetics and it's the opposite of human-centered thinking.

The rubric has owners: happyappe.substack.com/p/the-rubric...

Updated my personal site. Grateful that this space no longer needs to function as a job-seeking portfolio. Back to being a place for exploring without optimizing for... anything.

Illustration is my 25 year plan: becoming an older, slightly curmudgeonly designer. Hopefully still useful?

I think the idea that taste is an essential skill and a necessary input into good design is often elitist and quietly anti-humanist. One of my hopes for 2026 is that we begin to reposition this… | Bre... I think the idea that taste is an essential skill and a necessary input into good design is often elitist and quietly anti-humanist. One of my hopes for 2026 is that we begin to reposition this belief...

Taste is a loaded term because it smuggles class, power, and moral judgment into what appears to be a neutral preference. It then presents that judgment as universal, when it's not.