Area 03 · 2 lessons
Create
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When creation becomes cheap, taste becomes more important.
In one line: Decide what deserves to exist, then use generation to explore around that decision.
When you need it
- You have forty versions of something and no idea which one is good.
- The work is technically fine and you feel nothing about it.
- You are starting something and the blank page is pulling you straight to a prompt.
The common misreading
- What people think
- Taste is something you either have or you do not.
- What is true instead
- It is built the ordinary way — by looking closely at a lot of work and saying, each time, exactly why this one is better than that one. The saying-why is the part that builds it.
After this area you can state your own direction for a piece of work before you ask anything to generate around it.
The key idea
Generation is not creation. AI can produce thousands of possibilities — you decide which one deserves to exist.
What it teaches
- Creativity
- Originality
- Taste
- Design thinking
- Storytelling
- Experimentation
- Combining unrelated ideas
- Creative constraints
- Developing a point of view
Think first
An AI generates 20 name ideas for a friend's bakery. All of them are fine.
How would you decide which one deserves to exist? What makes a name more than "fine"?
The lessons
- Taste is a skill you can build — The more options there are, the more valuable it is to know which one is right. (5 min)
- Start with your own direction — Create your direction first; use AI to explore around it. (5 min)
Practise: Choose what deserves to exist
Practise taste, not generation.
- Pick something small to make: a title, a poster idea, a short story opening.
- Make your own version first.
- Ask AI for ten alternatives.
- Choose the single best option (yours or not) and write three reasons it is better than the rest.
Reflect
What did you discover about your own taste — what do you keep choosing, and why?