The Death of Scarcity, the Rebirth of Taste
There was a time when creative output was expensive. Designing a website took weeks. Writing a blog post meant interviews, drafts, and editing cycles. Shipping anything meant long hours and long timelines.
Back then, scarcity drove value. If you had a great landing page, it was likely better than your competitors simply because you had one - and they didn’t.
But AI has changed that.
Now, design is instant. Writing is automated. You can create ten headlines, three product variations, and a campaign visual in five minutes.
The scarcity is gone. But the value isn’t. So where did it go?
It moved to taste.
When Scarcity Drove Value
In the pre-AI world, content and design were hard to produce. Constraints made output precious:
Only a few assets could be prioritized each cycle
Code reviews and asset handoffs added friction
Production itself created a natural quality gate
This meant that simply creating something - anything - carried weight. Scarcity made things stand out.
But now, creation is no longer the bottleneck. You can generate 100 logos in a minute. 1,000 words in seconds. 10 UI variants before your coffee cools.
AI Killed Scarcity - and That’s Not a Bad Thing
It’s amazing that AI has made creativity more accessible. It means small teams can punch above their weight. It means founders can test ideas faster. It means iteration cycles shrink dramatically.
But here’s the catch: when everything is possible, nothing feels distinct by default.
We’re not dealing with a shortage of assets anymore - we’re dealing with a surplus of choices. And most of them sound the same, look the same, and feel... empty.
So what creates meaning now?
The Rebirth of Taste
Taste is the new bottleneck.
It’s not about how much you generate - it’s about what you choose to share.
Taste is:
Knowing which of the five designs actually fits your brand
Deciding what not to publish
Choosing the emotionally right tone over the most optimized CTA
Catching the one phrasing that sounds off in an otherwise good email
Taste isn’t subjective fluff. It’s the critical judgment that separates content from communication, features from products, and noise from signal.
And as AI generates more, taste becomes more important - not less.
What Taste Looks Like in Practice
If you’re wondering how to recognize or develop taste in a product or brand, here’s what it looks like in action:
A homepage that says something new, not just “AI for X”
A product that feels emotionally aligned from onboarding to empty states
A naming system that feels native, not made by committee
An AI feature that knows when to speak and when to stay quiet
A marketing campaign that sounds like your team - not the model
Taste shows up in the restraint, not the output count.
How Teams Can Design for Taste
You can’t automate good taste - but you can design your process to support it.
Here’s how:
Define what good looks like - use examples, metaphors, and references
Empower editors - make it someone’s job to care
Use human checkpoints - especially at moments of tone, emotion, and trust
Avoid the default - templates are useful, but taste lives in the deviation
Give feedback based on feel, not just performance metrics
Taste isn’t perfectionism. It’s clarity. It’s consistency. It’s alignment between what you make and how you want to be perceived.
Conclusion: Curation Is the Craft
AI has unlocked infinite creative potential. But with that comes a flood of sameness.
In this new world, your edge isn’t how fast you can generate - it’s how carefully you can choose.
The best brands won’t be the ones that publish the most. They’ll be the ones that feel the most intentional.
Scarcity is gone. Taste is back. Build your team, your brand, and your workflow around that - and you’ll stand out even when the feed is full.