Jason Calacanis shares a ten-day method to develop design taste: spend one hour daily on Dribbble or Behance, pick five designs you like, print and tape them to a wall. After ten days, keep only your five favorites. The constraint forces you to recognize what actually appeals to you.
Design matters, and here's a very simple hack to be a great designer. Go on Dribbble with 3 Bs or Behance.net. These are places where designers put their portfolios. There's a lot of other places. Type in what you're doing, so if it's a mobile phone, pick mobile. If it's a magazine, pick magazine. If it's outdoor advertising, pick outdoor advertising. And then sort it by the number of kudos or stars it has. And buy design magazines and read design blogs and find designers on Twitter and follow them and make a list of designers. And every day, just spend 1 hour. It takes 1 hour of your day, I'm sure. And all I want you to do for 1 hour a day is find 5 designs you like, and then I want you to print them out and tape them to the wall. And after 10 days, you'll have 50 fucking beautiful things taped to your wall. Then I want you to pick your 5 favorite and throw the other ones away. Guess what? Now you have taste. You have taste in 10 days, in 10 hours. It's a very simple technique.
