I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated(淹没) by applications from would-be graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can’’t tell is whether they have any kind of taste." You don’’t hear that word much now. And yet we still need the underlying concept, whatever we call it. What my friend meant was that he wanted students who were not just good technicians, but who could use their technical knowledge to design beautiful things. For those of us who design things, these are not just theoretical questions. If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let’’s try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that "taste is subjective." They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it’’s beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it’’s expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses. Like many of the half-truths s tell us, this one contradicts other things they tell us. After dinning into you that taste is merely a matter of personal preference, they take you to the museum and tell you that you should pay attention because Leonardo is a great artist. What goes through the kid’’s head at this point What does he think "great artist" means After having been told for years that everyone just likes to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist is someone whose work is better than the others’’. A far more likely theory, in his Ptolemaic (托勒密) model of the universe, is that a great artist is something that’’s good for you, like broccoli, because someone said so in a book. Saying that taste is just a personal preference is a good way to pr disputes. The trouble is, it’’s not true. You feel this when you start to design things. Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win s. CEOs like to increase earnings. It’’s a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone’’s is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that’’s it. As in any job, as you continue to design things, you’’ll get better at it. Your tastes will change. And, like anyone who gets better at their job, you’’ll know you’’re getting better. If so, your old tastes were not merely different, but worse. Poof goes the axiom that taste can’’t be wrong. Relativism is fashionable at the moment, and that may hamper you from thinking about taste, even as yours grows. But if you come out of the closet and admit, at least to yourself, that there is such a thing as good and bad design, then you can start to study good design in detail. How has your taste changed When you made mistakes, what caused you to make them What have other people learned about design Once you start to examine the question, it’’s surprising how much different fields’’ ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again. Good design is . You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, especially, less is more. It means much the same thing in programming. For architects and designers it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament. (Ornament is not in itself bad, only when it’’s camouflage on insipid form.) Similarly, in painting, a still life of a few carefully observed and solidly modelled objects will tend to be more interesting than a stretch of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting of, say, a lace collar. In writing it means: say what you mean and say it briefly. Good design is timeless. Aiming at timelessness is a way to make yourself find the best answer: if you can imagine someone surpassing you, you should do it yourself. Some of the greatest s did this so well that they left little room for those who came after. Every engraver since Durer has had to live in his shadow. Aiming at timelessness is also a way to evade the grip of fashion. Fashions almost by definition change with time, so if you can make something that will still look good far into the future, then its appeal must derive more from merit and less from fashion. Good design is suggestive. In architecture and design, this principle means that a building or object should let you use it how you want: a good building, for example, will serve as a backdrop for whatever life people want to lead in it, instead of them live as if they were executing a program written by the architect. In software, it means you should give users a few basic elements that they can combine as they wish. In math it means a proof that becomes the basis for a lot of new work is preferable to a proof that was difficult, but doesn’’t lead to future discoveries; in the sciences generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit. Good design is hard. Hard problems call for great efforts. In math, difficult proofs require ingenious solutions, and those tend to be interesting. Ditto in engineering. When you have to climb a mountain you toss everything unnecessary out of your pack. And so an architect who has to build on a difficult site, or a small budget, will find that he is forced to produce an elegant design. Fashions and flourishes get knocked aside by the difficult business of solving the problem at all. Good design looks easy. In most fields the appearance of ease seems to come with practice. Perhaps what practice does is to train your unconscious mind to handle tasks that used to require conscious thought. In some cases you literally train your body. An expert pianist can play notes faster than the brain can send signals to his hand. Likewise an artist, after a while, can make visual perception flow in through his eye and out through his hand as automatically as someone tapping his foot to a beat. When people talk about being in "the zone," I think what they mean is that the spinal cord has the situation under control. Your spinal cord is less hesitant, and it frees conscious thought for the hard problems. Good design uses symmetry. I think symmetry may just be one way to achieve simplicity, but it’’s important enough to be mentioned on its own. Nature uses it a lot, which is a good sign. There are two kinds of symmetry, repetition and recursion. Recursion means repetition in subelements, like the pattern of veins in a leaf. The er of symmetry, and repetition especially, is that it can be used as a substitute for thought. Good design resembles nature. It’’s not so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a long time to work on the problem. It’’s a good sign when your answer resembles nature’’s. It’’s not cheating to copy. Working from life is a valuable tool in painting. The aim is not simply to make a record. The point of painting from life is that it gives your mind something to chew on: when your eyes are looking at something, your hands will do more interesting work. The er of symmetry, and repetition especially, is that it can be used as________ for thought.