Taste without language is just a feeling

Most people know when something feels off. Fewer people can name why.

I notice this every term. A student pulls up their portfolio, and before I've said anything they're already squinting. They know. Something isn't landing. They just can't tell me what.

That gap — between knowing and naming — is the gap I'm most interested in. In teaching, in critique, in product work. Taste alone gets you to discomfort. Taste plus language gets you to the fix.

It's also what AI design tools don't bridge yet. They can generate competent work all day. What they can't do is look at a screen and say, "your hero is eating 80% of the real estate while the thing that would actually make me click is buried in 12-point text on line four." That specificity is judgment. Judgment needs language.

So when I'm teaching critique, I don't start with "what do you think?" I start with the specific vocabulary — hierarchy, contrast, anchor points, breathing room, anchor relationships, reading flow. Not because the words matter on their own, but because once you have them, you can point at the problem instead of feeling around it.

This is also why I don't love the "just feel it" school of design feedback. It describes something real — most of us really are pattern-matching from instinct — but it doesn't teach. And teaching is the whole point of a good critique.

The students who go the furthest aren't the ones with the best instincts. They're the ones who build the best vocabulary for their instincts. Instincts plus words equals a feedback loop they can use on themselves at 2 AM when there's no one else around to tell them the thing on the screen isn't working yet.