What Seven Years on One Brand Taught Me About Taste

Taste is not something you acquire all at once. It develops through exposure, repetition, and time. Working on the same brand for seven years accelerated that process in ways hopping between projects never could.

Staying put long enough to see cycles repeat changes how you think about design.

Time Reveals What Lasts

When you work on a brand year after year, trends stop being seductive. You watch ideas arrive with confidence and leave quietly. What felt urgent one season becomes dated the next. What felt conservative proves durable.

Over time, you learn to recognize the difference between what is interesting and what is useful. Between what draws attention and what builds trust.

Taste sharpens when you see the long arc.

From Expression to Stewardship

Early in a career, taste is often about self expression. What excites you. What feels clever. What gets noticed.

Long-term brand work shifts that perspective. Taste becomes stewardship. You are no longer designing for yourself. You are designing on behalf of something larger that will outlast you.

That responsibility changes your decisions. You push when it serves the brand. You hold back when it does not. You think in terms of continuity rather than novelty.

Repetition as Refinement

Revisiting the same problems year after year is not boring. It is revealing.

You get better at spotting weak ideas early. You recognize patterns in feedback. You learn where to invest energy and where to simplify.

Repetition refines judgment. It strips away ego and replaces it with clarity.

Confidence Without Noise

Working long-term on one brand builds a quiet confidence. You stop chasing validation. You stop over-explaining.

The work does not need to announce itself. It just needs to hold.

Taste, at its best, is not flashy. It is steady. And it is earned.