In technology, a "stack" describes the layers of tools and technologies that sit on top of each other to create a product. A database at the bottom, a server in the middle, an interface on top. Each layer depends on the ones below it. Each layer adds a capability that the layers beneath it can't provide alone. The stack is how complexity is organised into something functional.
I've started thinking about taste the same way. Not as a single thing - "I have good taste" or "I don't have taste" - but as a stack. Layers of influence, experience, and obsession that accumulate over a lifetime and interact with each other to produce the specific aesthetic sensibility that shapes everything you make. Your taste stack is unique. Nobody else has the same combination of layers. And understanding your own stack - being able to articulate what sits where and why - is one of the most valuable exercises a creative person can do.
Here's my attempt to map my own taste stack, from the foundation layer up.
Layer 1: The foundation - place and era
The bottom layer of everyone's taste stack is where and when they grew up. This is the bedrock that everything else sits on. It isn't chosen. It is given. And it shapes everything that follows in ways that are almost impossible to fully appreciate because they're so fundamental.
My foundation layer is Nottingham in the 1990s. A city big enough to have culture but small enough that you had to seek it out. Record shops on narrow streets. The Nottingham Forest identity - a working-class club with a European Cup pedigree, which is a particular combination of humility and pride that shaped how I think about craft and understatement. The East Midlands sensibility of doing before talking, of substance over flash, of not shouting about how good you're but quietly proving it.
This layer is invisible to me most of the time. But it shows up in everything I make. The preference for understated design over flashy design. The discomfort with self-promotion. The belief that the work should speak for itself. These aren't design principles I chose. They're the foundations I inherited from growing up in a particular place at a particular time.
Layer 2: The input layer - what you consumed
The second layer is what you consumed during your formative years. Not what you chose to consume - you were too young to choose consciously - but what was available and what caught your attention. For me, this was print magazines. The Face, i-D, Dazed & Confused, and a dozen others. These were my internet before the internet existed. They were curated windows into worlds I couldn't otherwise access - fashion, music, design, culture - and they taught me that curation is a creative act long before I had the vocabulary to express that idea.
Music sits in this layer too. Electronic music - house, techno, the clean layered architecture of a well-produced track. The obsession with detail that electronic music demands. The way a single sound, placed precisely, can transform a track from good to transcendent. This sensibility transferred directly to how I think about design: every element matters, every placement is intentional, the space between things is as important as the things themselves.
Books, films, television, advertising - all of it goes into this layer. Not individual pieces, but the aggregate. The accumulated exposure that builds your vocabulary of reference points. The more you consume, the richer this layer becomes, and the more connections you can draw between disparate influences.
Layer 3: The professional layer - what you practised
The third layer is your professional experience. This is where taste gets tested against reality. Where aesthetic preferences meet audience understanding. Where the theoretical question "what do I like?" becomes the practical question "what works?"
Fifteen years in advertising taught me things about taste that no amount of personal consumption could have. It taught me that taste isn't just what you like - it's understanding what other people like and why. It taught me that the most elegant solution is useless if the audience doesn't connect with it. It taught me the difference between taste that impresses your peers and taste that moves your audience. They're rarely the same thing.
This layer adds discipline to the stack. The foundation and input layers are about accumulation - absorbing as much as possible. The professional layer is about application - using what you've absorbed in service of a specific goal. It's where taste becomes a tool rather than just a preference.
Layer 4: The obsession layer - what you can't stop
Above the professional layer sits something more personal: the things you're obsessed with. Not interested in, not appreciative of, not professionally engaged with. Obsessed. The topics and aesthetics and details that you return to compulsively, that you notice when nobody else does, that you think about when you should be thinking about something else.
For me, this layer includes Japanese design and culture - the precision, the respect for materials, the concept of wabi-sabi, the food culture that treats every detail as worthy of attention. It includes the 1970s retail aesthetic that became Modern Retro - an obsession with a specific visual language that I can't fully explain but that I recognise instantly and find endlessly compelling. It includes the intersection of brands and culture - not brand strategy in the professional sense, but the deeper question of how brands become cultural artefacts.
The obsession layer is where your taste stack becomes uniquely yours. Lots of people have similar foundations and similar inputs. Lots of people in advertising have similar professional layers. But nobody has the same combination of obsessions. The specific intersection of Japanese culture, 1970s retail aesthetics, electronic music, Nottingham Forest, and print magazine nostalgia is mine alone. It's an improbable combination. And it's exactly why the things I make feel the way they do.
Layer 5: The synthesis layer - what you make
The top layer of the taste stack is the output. What you actually make. This layer is where all the lower layers interact, combine, and express themselves through the specific act of creation. It's the visible part of the iceberg - the products, the designs, the words - that sits on top of everything hidden beneath.
When I built Taste OS, I was essentially trying to make this framework explicit. To create a tool that helps people score and articulate their aesthetic sensibility - not as a single number, but as a multi-dimensional profile. The Taste Stack is the theory behind that tool. The idea that taste isn't a monolith but a structure. That it has layers, and those layers interact, and the interaction is what produces the unique quality of what you make.
Look at any product I've built and you can see the layers. The foundation: understated, substance over flash, the Nottingham sensibility. The inputs: the editorial instinct from magazines, the layered precision from electronic music. The professional: the audience understanding from advertising, the strategic thinking. The obsessions: the Japanese attention to detail, the cultural curiosity, the specific visual languages that fascinate me. The synthesis: products that try to be beautiful and useful, curated and opinionated, considered in every detail.
Why this matters
Understanding your taste stack matters because it makes your creative decisions more intentional. When you know what sits at each layer, you can draw on specific influences consciously rather than relying on instinct alone. You can identify gaps - layers that are thin and need enriching. You can explain your aesthetic decisions not as "I just liked it" but as "this draws from a specific influence in my input layer, filtered through a professional understanding of what works."
It also matters because taste is becoming the most important creative differentiator. When AI can generate anything, the question is no longer "can you make this?" but "should you make this?" and "what should it feel like?" Those are taste questions. And the people who can answer them well - the people who have deep, rich, well-understood taste stacks - will be the ones who create things that matter in a world of infinite production capability.
Your taste stack is your competitive advantage. It's the thing that AI can't replicate, because it was formed by a unique combination of place, era, consumption, practice, and obsession that no model can be trained on. It is yours. The deeper you understand it, the better you can use it. And the better you use it, the more distinctive your work becomes.
Taste isn't a gift. It is a stack. Build it deliberately. Understand it deeply. Deploy it with confidence. It's the only unfair advantage that gets stronger the more you use it.
