Most designers have felt the moment when data runs out, and intuition takes over. You’ve mapped the journeys, talked to users, tested the prototypes, but something still feels off (or occasionally, exactly right). That instinct is taste, and the ability to hold it across an entire product, brand, and team? That’s vision. Neither is innate. Both can be developed, and when they are, they become the difference between design that works and design that is loved.
Great design often emerges between logic and intuition—the same space where David Bowie, George Nelson, and Hilma af Klint found creative clarity. Bowie, in his Berlin period, built emotional structure from restraint. Nelson, the modernist architect and writer, turned seeing into a discipline, teaching designers to perceive relationships rather than shapes. Af Klint painted what she intuited before abstraction even had a name, blending spiritual intention with methodical craft.
Together, they define the foundation of design leadership: perception, experimentation, and coherence through feeling. These are not artistic luxuries. They are practical tools for leading design in fast, AI‑forward digital environments.
Vision vs. Requirements
Most projects begin with requirements. Features, functions, measurable goals. Few begin with vision. Requirements define what to build; vision defines why it should exist—a statement about how an experience should feel and what it should make possible. Apple’s ‘computers for the rest of us’ or Airbnb’s ‘belong anywhere’ weren’t specs; they were philosophies that shaped every decision downstream.
Projects that start with vision align faster because the emotional goal is clear. Those that start with only requirements deliver output that works but rarely resonates.
What a Design Vision Looks Like
A design vision can take many forms: a manifesto, a short film, a prototype that captures feeling as much as function. What matters is the clarity it provides. When IDEO helped develop Apple’s first mouse, early prototypes weren’t mechanical tests. They explored what the interaction felt like. Was it natural, effortless, and kind to use? The final design was born from that calibration.
Artifacts like these give teams of engineers, marketers, and designers something to point to and say, ‘That’s what we’re aiming for.’ Vision turns guesswork into guidance.
Who Owns the Vision?
Vision has many contributors but needs a steward. Product defines what to achieve. Stakeholders define what to deliver. Design defines how it should feel. In practice, that means being the person who holds the experience standard. The one who notices when something works on paper but feels wrong in someone’s hands. The one who keeps pulling the team back to the original intent.
That stewardship works best when it’s collaborative. Bowie and Brian Eno are a good example. Eno brought systems, ambient structure, and processes. Bowie brought instinct and emotional risk. Neither tried to own the whole thing. The work was better because both pushed from their own side. That’s design leadership. You’re the one who holds the standard for how it feels.
Vision as a Decision‑Making Tool
A clear vision changes where a team spends its energy. Without one, most of the time goes to internal decisions. Which direction is right? What style fits? Whether this typeface or that one. The debates are well-intentioned, but they’re inward-facing. When vision is clear, those decisions get easier because they have something to answer to. The team’s attention shifts outward. Does this feel simple to use? Is the experience frictionless? Is it rewarding? The focus moves from how the design looks to the team to how the experience feels to the person using it.
That’s the practical value of vision. It points the whole team in the same direction: toward the experience.”
The Taste Economy: Vision as Applied Taste
Taste is cultivated intuition. The ability to sense coherence before it’s measurable. In a world where AI can generate, scale, and iterate design faster than any team, taste is what decides which output actually feels right. That makes it a strategic advantage, not a soft skill.
We felt this recently during a working session with our development, AI, marketing, and product teams. No formal critique. No scheduled review. Just the team live-jamming on website details, breakpoints, and interaction patterns in real time. AI accelerated the iteration, and taste guided what we kept and what we killed. When something clicked, everyone in the room knew it. Not because someone presented a rationale. Because it felt right.
Vision in Professional Practice
Making vision actionable takes intention:
- Define what success feels like. Clarify the emotional standard at kickoff.
- Capture it early. Create a story, prototype, or short film that embodies the desired experience.
- Assign stewardship. Design guards coherence, in partnership with product and engineering.
- Use vision as a filter. Test every choice against the intended feeling.
- Refine continually. Vision evolves as collective taste matures.
Vision and taste are not abstractions; they are mechanisms of leadership. Nelson taught us to see relationships, not shapes. Af Klint taught us to trust intuition and give spirit form. Bowie showed how discipline transforms emotion into structure.
Professional design practice lives where those lessons intersect: clarity, courage, and craft. When AI can generate anything, the rarest skill is taste–the human ability to decide what belongs and why. Vision is how that skill scales across a team, a product, a brand. Both can be practised, both can be sharpened, and the work is exponentially better because of it. That’s what we believe. That’s how we build.
