Comment by DrewADesign
6 hours ago
It’s not that straightforward. Art directors and designers get paid to visually communicate things the business wants to communicate— anything from brand vibes, to directing people to click on a “buy me” button, to the state of an interface. Most designers in tech companies aren’t even the ones that design things like branding — that’s done by specialists in extremely well-compensated studios, and corporate designers are stuck following their guidelines. Taste is nearly irrelevant to an interface designer, for example.
Fair point. I was conflating taste with design, which is a different thing. But I think this actually strengthens the argument. If even the people whose entire job is visual judgment are mostly executing within constraints set by someone else, then "taste" as an individual moat is even weaker than the article claims. The leverage is in setting the constraints, not in having better judgment within them
The job isn't about visual judgement, but composition. Judgement/taste is the responsibility of directors and executives.