TASTE FOR

MAKERS
by Paul Graham (February 2002)
I WAS TALKING
recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot
http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html now and every year he is inundated by applications from
would-be graduate students. “A lot of them seem smart,”
“...Copernicus’ aesthetic objections to [equants] he said. “What I can’t tell is whether they have any kind
provided one essential motive for his rejection of the of taste.”
Ptolemaic system...”
—Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution Taste. You don’t hear that word much now. And yet we
still need the underlying concept, whatever we call it.
“All of us had been trained by Kelly Johnson and What my friend meant was that he wanted students who
believed fanatically in his insistence that an airplane that were not just good technicians, but who could use their
looked beautiful would fly the same way.” technical knowledge to design beautiful things.
—Ben Rich, Skunk Works
Mathematicians call good work “beautiful,” and so, either
“Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in now or in the past, have scientists, engineers, musicians,
this world for ugly mathematics.” architects, designers, writers, and painters. Is it just a
—G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology coincidence that they used the same word, or is there
some overlap in what they meant? If there is an overlap,
can we use one field’s discoveries about beauty to help What goes through the kid’s head at this point? What
us in another? does he think “great artist” means? After having been
told for years that everyone just likes to do things
For those of us who design things, these are not just their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the
theoretical questions. If there is such a thing as beauty, conclusion that a great artist is someone whose work
we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste is better than the others’. A far more likely theory, in his
to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an Ptolemaic model of the universe, is that a great artist
airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided is something that’s good for you, like broccoli, because
depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let’s someone said so in a book.
try considering it as a practical question: how do you
make good stuff?

Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good

way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it’s not true. You
If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell feel this when you start to design things.
you that “taste is subjective.” They believe this because it
really feels that way to them. When they like something, Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do
they have no idea why. It could be because it’s beautiful, better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like
or because their mother had one, or because they saw to increase earnings. It’s a matter of pride, and a real
a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to
know it’s expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then
unexamined impulses. there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just
personal preference, then everyone’s is already perfect:
Most of us are encouraged, as children, to leave this you like whatever you like, and that’s it.
tangle unexamined. If you make fun of your little brother
for coloring people green in his coloring book, your As in any job, as you continue to design things, you’ll get
mother is likely to tell you something like “you like to do better at it. Your tastes will change. And, like anyone who
it your way and he likes to do it his way.” gets better at their job, you’ll know you’re getting better.
If so, your old tastes were not merely different, but worse.
Your mother at this point is not trying to teach you Poof goes the axiom that taste can’t be wrong.
important truths about aesthetics. She’s trying to get the
two of you to stop bickering. Relativism is fashionable at the moment, and that may
hamper you from thinking about taste, even as yours
Like many of the half-truths adults tell us, this one grows. But if you come out of the closet and admit, at
contradicts other things they tell us. After dinning into least to yourself, that there is such a thing as good and
you that taste is merely a matter of personal preference, bad design, then you can start to study good design in
they take you to the museum and tell you that you detail. How has your taste changed? When you made
should pay attention because Leonardo is a great artist. mistakes, what caused you to make them? What have
other people learned about design?
 In math, every proof
Once you start to examine the question, it’s surprising is timeless unless it contains a mistake. So what does
how much different fields’ ideas of beauty have in Hardy mean when he says there is no permanent place
common. The same principles of good design crop up for ugly mathematics? He means the same thing Kelly
again and again. Johnson did: if something is ugly, it can’t be the best
solution. There must be a better one, and eventually
someone will discover it.
You hear this from math
to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof Aiming at timelessness is a way to make yourself find the
tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, best answer: if you can imagine someone surpassing you,
especially, less is more. It means much the same thing you should do it yourself. Some of the greatest masters
in programming. For architects and designers it means did this so well that they left little room for those who
that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen came after. Every engraver since Durer has had to live in
structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial his shadow.
ornament. (Ornament is not in itself bad, only when it’s
camouflage on insipid form.) Similarly, in painting, a still Aiming at timelessness is also a way to evade the grip of
life of a few carefully observed and solidly modelled fashion. Fashions almost by definition change with time,
objects will tend to be more interesting than a stretch so if you can make something that will still look good far
of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting of, say, a lace into the future, then its appeal must derive more from
collar. In writing it means: say what you mean and say it merit and less from fashion.
briefly.
Strangely enough, if you want to make something that
It seems strange to have to emphasize simplicity. will appeal to future generations, one way to do it is to
You’d think simple would be the default. Ornate is try to appeal to past generations. It’s hard to guess what
more work. But something seems to come over people the future will be like, but we can be sure it will be like
when they try to be creative. Beginning writers adopt the past in caring nothing for present fashions. So if you
a pompous tone that doesn’t sound anything like the can make something that appeals to people today and
way they speak. Designers trying to be artistic resort to would also have appealed to people in 1500, there is a
swooshes and curlicues. Painters discover that they’re good chance it will appeal to people in 2500.
expressionists. It’s all evasion. Underneath the long
words or the “expressive” brush strokes, there is not
much going on, and that’s frightening.
The typical stove has four burners arranged in a square,
When you’re forced to be simple, you’re forced to face and a dial to control each. How do you arrange the dials?
the real problem. When you can’t deliver ornament, you The simplest answer is to put them in a row. But this is
have to deliver substance. a simple answer to the wrong question. The dials are for
humans to use, and if you put them in a row, the unlucky
human will have to stop and think each time about which
dial matches which burner. Better to arrange the dials in
a square like the burners. This
one may not always be true. But Durer’s engravings
A lot of bad design is industrious, but misguided. In the and Saarinen’s womb chair and the Pantheon and the
mid twentieth century there was a vogue for setting text original Porsche 911 all seem to me slightly funny. Godel’s
in sans-serif fonts. These fonts are closer to the pure, incompleteness theorem seems like a practical joke.
underlying letterforms. But in text that’s not the problem
you’re trying to solve. For legibility it’s more important I think it’s because humor is related to strength. To have
that letters be easy to tell apart. It may look Victorian, a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one’s sense
but a Times Roman lowercase g is easy to tell from a of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one’s
lowercase y. sense of humor is to be wounded by them. And so the
mark — or at least the prerogative — of strength is not to
Problems can be improved as well as solutions. In take oneself too seriously. The confident will often, like
software, an intractable problem can usually be replaced swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process
by an equivalent one that’s easy to solve. Physics slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his
progressed faster as the problem became predicting paintings — or Shakespeare, for that matter.
observable behavior, instead of reconciling it with
scripture. Good design may not have to be funny, but it’s hard to
imagine something that could be called humorless also
being good design.
Jane Austen’s novels
contain almost no description; instead of telling you
how everything looks, she tells her story so well that you If you look at the people
envision the scene for yourself. Likewise, a painting that who’ve done great work, one thing they all seem to have
suggests is usually more engaging than one that tells. in common is that they worked very hard. If you’re not
Everyone makes up their own story about the Mona Lisa. working hard, you’re probably wasting your time.

In architecture and design, this principle means that a Hard problems call for great efforts. In math, difficult
building or object should let you use it how you want: a proofs require ingenious solutions, and those tend to be
good building, for example, will serve as a backdrop for interesting. Ditto in engineering.
whatever life people want to lead in it, instead of making
them live as if they were executing a program written by When you have to climb a mountain you toss everything
the architect. unnecessary out of your pack. And so an architect who
has to build on a difficult site, or a small budget, will find
In software, it means you should give users a few basic that he is forced to produce an elegant design. Fashions
elements that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. and flourishes get knocked aside by the difficult business
In math it means a proof that becomes the basis for a lot of solving the problem at all.
of new work is preferable to a proof that was difficult,
but doesn’t lead to future discoveries; in the sciences Not every kind of hard is good. There is good pain and
generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit. bad pain. You want the kind of pain you get from going
 running, not the kind you get from stepping on a nail. Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual
A difficult problem could be good for a designer, but a medium, because they demand near perfection. In
fickle client or unreliable materials would not be. math terms, they are a closed-form solution; lesser
artists literally solve the same problems by successive
In art, the highest place has traditionally been given to approximation. One of the reasons kids give up drawing
paintings of people. There is something to this tradition, at ten or so is that they decide to start drawing like
and not just because pictures of faces get to press grownups, and one of the first things they try is a line
buttons in our brains that other pictures don’t. We are drawing of a face. Smack!
so good at looking at faces that we force anyone who
draws them to work hard to satisfy us. If you draw a tree In most fields the appearance of ease seems to come
and you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no with practice. Perhaps what practice does is train your
one will know. When you change the angle of someone’s unconscious mind to handle tasks that used to require
eye five degrees, people notice. conscious thought. In some cases you literally train your
body. An expert pianist can play notes faster than the
Sullivan actually
When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan’s “form follows brain can send signals to his hand. Likewise an artist,
said “form function,” what they meant was, form should follow after a while, can make visual perception flow in through
ever follows
function,” but I function. And if function is hard enough, form is forced to his eye and out through his hand as automatically as
think the usual follow it, because there is no effort to spare for error. Wild someone tapping his foot to a beat.
misquotation
is closer to animals are beautiful because they have hard lives.
what modernist When people talk about being in “the zone,” I think what
architects meant.
they mean is that the spinal cord has the situation under
control. Your spinal cord is less hesitant, and it frees
Like great athletes, great conscious thought for the hard problems.
designers make it look easy. Mostly this is an illusion. The
easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on
the eighth rewrite. I think symmetry
may just be one way to achieve simplicity, but it’s
In science and engineering, some of the greatest important enough to be mentioned on its own. Nature
discoveries seem so simple that you say to yourself, I uses it a lot, which is a good sign.
could have thought of that. The discoverer is entitled to
reply, why didn’t you? There are two kinds of symmetry, repetition and
recursion. Recursion means repetition in subelements,
Some Leonardo heads are just a few lines. You look at like the pattern of veins in a leaf.
them and you think, all you have to do is get eight or ten
lines in the right place and you’ve made this beautiful Symmetry is unfashionable in some fields now, in
portrait. Well, yes, but you have to get them in exactly reaction to excesses in the past. Architects started
the right place. The slightest error will make the whole consciously making buildings asymmetric in Victorian
thing collapse. times and by the 1920s asymmetry was an explicit
premise of modernist architecture. Even these buildings
only tended to be asymmetric about major axes, though; early aircraft designers were mistaken to design
there were hundreds of minor symmetries. aircraft that looked like birds, because they didn’t have
materials or power sources light enough (the Wrights’
In writing you find symmetry at every level, from the engine weighed 152 lbs. and generated only 12 hp.) or
phrases in a sentence to the plot of a novel. You find the control systems sophisticated enough for machines
same in music and art. Mosaics (and some Cezannes) get that flew like birds, but I could imagine little unmanned
extra visual punch by making the whole picture out of reconnaissance planes flying like birds in fifty years.
the same atoms. Compositional symmetry yields some
of the most memorable paintings, especially when two Now that we have enough computer power, we can
halves react to one another, as in the Creation of Adam imitate nature’s method as well as its results. Genetic
or American Gothic. algorithms may let us create things too complex to
design in the ordinary sense.
In math and engineering, recursion, especially, is a big
win. Inductive proofs are wonderfully short. In software,
a problem that can be solved by recursion is nearly It’s rare to get things
always best solved that way. The Eiffel Tower looks right the first time. Experts expect to throw away some
striking partly because it is a recursive solution, a tower early work. They plan for plans to change.
on a tower.
It takes confidence to throw work away. You have to
The danger of symmetry, and repetition especially, is be able to think, there’s more where that came from.
that it can be used as a substitute for thought. When people first start drawing, for example, they’re
often reluctant to redo parts that aren’t right; they feel
they’ve been lucky to get that far, and if they try to redo
It’s not so something, it will turn out worse. Instead they convince
much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that themselves that the drawing is not that bad, really— in
nature has had a long time to work on the problem. It’s a fact, maybe they meant it to look that way.
good sign when your answer resembles nature’s.
Dangerous territory, that; if anything you should cultivate
It’s not cheating to copy. Few would deny that a story dissatisfaction. In Leonardo’s drawings there are often
should be like life. Working from life is a valuable five or six attempts to get a line right. The distinctive
tool in painting too, though its role has often been back of the Porsche 911 only appeared in the redesign
misunderstood. The aim is not simply to make a record. of an awkward prototype. In Wright’s early plans for the
The point of painting from life is that it gives your mind Guggenheim, the right half was a ziggurat; he inverted it
something to chew on: when your eyes are looking at to get the present shape.
something, your hand will do more interesting work.
Mistakes are natural. Instead of treating them as
Imitating nature also works in engineering. Boats have disasters, make them easy to acknowledge and easy to
long had spines and ribs like an animal’s ribcage. In fix. Leonardo more or less invented the sketch, as a way
some cases we may have to wait for better technology: to make drawing bear a greater weight of exploration.
Open-source software has fewer bugs because it admits I’m not sure why. It may just be my own stupidity. A can-
the possibility of bugs. opener must seem miraculous to a dog. Maybe if I were
smart enough it would seem the most natural thing in
It helps to have a medium that makes change easy. the world that ei*pi = -1. It is after all necessarily true.
When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century,
it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like Most of the qualities I’ve mentioned are things that
the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be can be cultivated, but I don’t think it works to cultivate
blended and overpainted. strangeness. The best you can do is not squash it if it
starts to appear. Einstein didn’t try to make relativity
strange. He tried to make it true, and the truth turned
Attitudes to copying often out to be strange.
make a round trip. A novice imitates without knowing
it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he At an art school where I once studied, the students
decides it’s more important to be right than original. wanted most of all to develop a personal style. But if
you just try to make good things, you’ll inevitably do
Unknowing imitation is almost a recipe for bad design. it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a
If you don’t know where your ideas are coming from, distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint
you’re probably imitating an imitator. Raphael so like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he
pervaded mid-nineteenth century taste that almost couldn’t help painting like Michelangelo.
anyone who tried to draw was imitating him, often at
several removes. It was this, more than Raphael’s own The only style worth having is the one you can’t help.
work, that bothered the Pre-Raphaelites. And this is especially true for strangeness. There is
no shortcut to it. The Northwest Passage that the
The ambitious are not content to imitate. The second Mannerists, the Romantics, and two generations of
phase in the growth of taste is a conscious attempt at American high school students have searched for does
originality. not seem to exist. The only way to get there is to go
through good and come out the other side.
I think the greatest masters go on to achieve a kind of
selflessness. They just want to get the right answer, and
if part of the right answer has already been discovered The
by someone else, that’s no reason not to use it. They’re inhabitants of fifteenth century Florence included
confident enough to take from anyone without feeling Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Filippo
that their own vision will be lost in the process. Lippi, Fra Angelico, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Leonardo, and
Michelangelo. Milan at the time was as big as Florence.
How many fifteenth century Milanese artists can you
Some of the name?
very best work has an uncanny quality: Euler’s Formula,
Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, the SR-71, Lisp. They’re Something was happening in Florence in the fifteenth
not just beautiful, but strangely beautiful. century. And it can’t have been heredity, because it
isn’t happening now. You have to assume that whatever This problem afflicts not just every era, but in some
inborn ability Leonardo and Michelangelo had, there degree every field. Much Renaissance art was in its
were people born in Milan with just as much. What time considered shockingly secular: according to
happened to the Milanese Leonardo? Vasari, Botticelli repented and gave up painting, and
Fra Bartolommeo and Lorenzo di Credi actually burned
There are roughly a thousand times as many people some of their work. Einstein’s theory of relativity
alive in the US right now as lived in Florence during the offended many contemporary physicists, and was not
fifteenth century. A thousand Leonardos and a thousand fully accepted for decades— in France, not until the
Michelangelos walk among us. If DNA ruled, we should 1950s.
be greeted daily by artistic marvels. We aren’t, and the
reason is that to make Leonardo you need more than his Today’s experimental error is tomorrow’s new theory.
innate ability. You also need Florence in 1450. If you want to discover great new things, then instead
of turning a blind eye to the places where conventional
Nothing is more powerful than a community of talented wisdom and truth don’t quite meet, you should pay
people working on related problems. Genes count for particular attention to them.
little by comparison: being a genetic Leonardo was not
enough to compensate for having been born near Milan
instead of Florence. Today we move around more, but
great work still comes disproportionately from a few As a practical matter, I think it’s easier to see ugliness
hotspots: the Bauhaus, the Manhattan Project, the New than to imagine beauty. Most of the people who’ve
Yorker, Lockheed’s Skunk Works, Xerox Parc. made beautiful things seem to have done it by fixing
something that they thought ugly. Great work usually
At any given time there are a few hot topics and a seems to happen because someone sees something and
few groups doing great work on them, and it’s nearly thinks, I could do better than that. Giotto saw traditional
impossible to do good work yourself if you’re too far Byzantine madonnas painted according to a formula
removed from one of these centers. You can push or pull that had satisfied everyone for centuries, and to him
these trends to some extent, but you can’t break away they looked wooden and unnatural. Copernicus was so
from them. (Maybe you can, but the Milanese Leonardo troubled by a hack that all his contemporaries could
couldn’t.) tolerate that he felt there must be a better solution.

Intolerance for ugliness is not in itself enough. You

At every period have to understand a field well before you develop a
of history, people have believed things that were just good nose for what needs fixing. You have to do your
ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked homework. But as you become expert in a field, you’ll
ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. start to hear little voices saying, What a hack! There must
be a better way. Don’t ignore those voices. Cultivate
If our own time were any different, that would be them. The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste,
remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn’t. plus the ability to gratify it.