Develop Aesthetic intelligence

[integral]

Worked as a web designer for many years and you always end up working with some of your clients who have horrendous taste, and they gravitate towards things that convert really badly. They do not understand how a thing makes them feel and the level of beauty something is at.

You might think this is completely subjective. And it's not. You can have different categories of things, but they will always be a hierarchy from a lower end of aesthetics to a higher end of aesthetics.

If you have super low aesthetic taste, you're deeply out of tune with how things make you feel and you have huge gaps in your sense making. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case but it's as clear as day when you interact with people they're aesthetic Intelligence closely relates to their level of consciousness.

Your level of consciousness and your aesthetic intelligence are closely connected.

The more conscious you are the finer you could see every aesthetic qualities to something.

There's many insights here that I haven't had yet to really understand why a person's level of consciousness is so directly linked to aesthetics. 

The most annoying thing is you can never communicate to them that they're wrong. 😑 LMAO

Edited January 15 by integral

[Rilles]

Aesthetic value also seems to connect with symbolic understanding, to understand that something represents what its not is huge in any form of art, which is why someone can look at abstract art and love it while another dude will say “its just a banana, whats the point?”.

[Eskilon]

50 minutes ago, integral said:

You might think this is completely subjective. And it's not.

it is, and you cannot prove otherwise. 

 

50 minutes ago, integral said:

You can have different categories of things, but they will always be a hierarchy from a lower end of aesthetics to a higher end of aesthetics.

Those hierarchies are relative things and from a certain point of view.

----

If you been doing this work for some time it does seem that there are higher and lower forms of aesthetics, but for me thats just your ego leaking lol

Edited January 15 by Eskilon

[LastThursday]

Thing is, aesthetic value has a large dollop of current fashion built into it. So if you remove that what are you left with?

If you are conscious enough (whatever that means), then you will find start finding aesthetic value in everything, because you realise that beauty is everywhere and in everything, and taste goes out the window.

There are rules for good composition, and balance and framing and subject matter, and those rules change over time.

[integral]

Within each relative type of aesthetic, there's higher and lower forms of aesthetic.

There has to be a distinction being made between type and higher/lower.

We are not in the absolute domain.

There's a difference between young and old. Sure, if you take LSD, you could make anything look good, but thats not the truth.

This is finite and there are limits.

Torture is not love in the finite only in the absolute.

Edited January 15 by integral

[CARDOZZO]

What do you think about retrofuturism, art deco, Braun product design?

[integral]

4 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

What do you think about retrofuturism, art deco, Braun product design?

These are types. Each has a way of doing them well or poorly. Less or more consciously.

Quality is happening.

Edited January 16 by integral

[integral]

Check this video reddit Random niche done well. 

 

Edited January 16 by integral

[Leo Gura]

Yes, for sure this is a thing.

Great taste is rare. Which is why most people can't be artists.

Artist needs superb taste.

I have been developing my taste and eye for 25 years.

Edited January 17 by Leo Gura

[Natasha Tori Maru]

On 16/01/2026 at 10:34 AM, LastThursday said:

Thing is, aesthetic value has a large dollop of current fashion built into it. So if you remove that what are you left with?

If you are conscious enough (whatever that means), then you will find start finding aesthetic value in everything, because you realise that beauty is everywhere and in everything, and taste goes out the window.

There are rules for good composition, and balance and framing and subject matter, and those rules change over time.

How would you seperate style vs trend? I would argue aesthetics have a style. Trends are something totally seperate and have no requirement to be aesthetic.

I am an artist. Oil painter and trained in fine arts from scratch, from an old-school art master painter. Studied first principles. Pencil only for 10 years, then pen, then colours, then watercolour > acrylic > oil etc

I haven't noticed rules for good, balanced composition change. Usually principles such us; rule of thirds, vanishing points, light/dark grade, focal point etc all follow a similar theme that contributes to 'aesthetic' appearance.

Across any medium there is usually a consistent pattern of interplay of these compositional elements, or some unusual variation of. But they don't really change. The principal is there in a new configuration.

[Leo Gura]

25 minutes ago, No1Here2c said:

@Leo Gura what methods have you personally employed to refine your aesthetic sense?

Lots of looking at images and contemplation of them.

[Leo Gura]

29 minutes ago, No1Here2c said:

I can imagine your process looks much more clean and effective than mine. 

No, I don't have any special process, and lately I don't do much of that. I used to do it more when I did more graphic design.

One tip is to build up large libraries of your own top images. Then study those libraries.

[gengar]

Taste is not everything though, although it is the majority of what makes art good.

Technique is also crucial, not only for the ability to make art in the first place, but because taste is also in the fingers itself, not just the brain. Your fingers are intelligent and contain their own artistic taste that can never be developed with just mental, non-manual taste development.
By spending hours improvising on the piano for example your fingers will be able to create melodies that you could never make up by drawing them on a digital music program for example.

[gengar]

24 minutes ago, No1Here2c said:

This same phenomenon must exist in not just the visual realm, but the realm of sounds and music right?

Isn't it apparent that one's Level of Consciousness has a direct correlation on what types of musical and sonic content any given person enjoys?

So what would you propose high consciousness people listen to?

[gengar]

On 16/01/2026 at 0:34 AM, LastThursday said:

Thing is, aesthetic value has a large dollop of current fashion built into it. So if you remove that what are you left with?

If you are conscious enough (whatever that means), then you will find start finding aesthetic value in everything, because you realise that beauty is everywhere and in everything, and taste goes out the window.

There are rules for good composition, and balance and framing and subject matter, and those rules change over time.

I disagree with your sneaky relativising of aesthetic principles. Just because God thinks a turd is beautiful doesn't mean that when I take a picture of a turd with my iphone its good art. It's not only about current fashion, but about much deeper psychological trends of the mind, "mesotrends" if you will.
 

[integral]

You can feel the amount of stress or enjoyment something has, this is the feeling that has to be noticed to understand high quality vs low quality.

But dont confuse this for preferences/type/niche.

Why is AI slope bad? Its a chinese nock off of the real thing, the quality is worse.

Ive given a website to a client and within a year i went back to check on it to be horified by the changes made. They tried to make changes to save cost on there own but they have no idea how colors work togetter.

Contemplate how colors work! 

Edited January 17 by integral

[LastThursday]

7 hours ago, gengar said:

I disagree with your sneaky relativising of aesthetic principles.

I disagree with your disagreement, obviously. Are aesthetic principles god given absolutes? What is a pyschological mesotrend anyway?

8 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

How would you seperate style vs trend?

There a slow trends and fast trends. I'd say a particular style is borne out of the current set of trends or takes elements from it at least. There may be other reasons for trends other than aesthetics (maybe money), but in art and fashion and design it's largely driven by aesthetics. New aesthetic values are invented, Cubism, Brutalism, Bauhaus, Sans Serif, Zen Gardens and new trends are started. One feeds into the other.

9 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I haven't noticed rules for good, balanced composition change. Usually principles such us; rule of thirds, vanishing points, light/dark grade, focal point etc all follow a similar theme that contributes to 'aesthetic' appearance.

The rule of thirds depends on the canvas or photograph which is nearly always rectangular, and so comes out of the constraints of a medium, rather than being inate or absolute as such. But we do like easy fractions and find them aesthetic visually and in music (fifths, octaves etc).

I'm not trying to be a complete relativist however. We do have a predisposition to find things in nature beautiful, and so we consistently grab motifs from there and find it aesthetically pleasing. We also have inbuilt biases in our perceptual systems, and those come through in our aesthetics too: light versus shade, focal points, movement etc. And we especially are prone to finding human bodies and faces aesthetic, and they are indeed everywhere in art and fashion and advertising. So if we have an "aesthetic intelligence" then it comes out of these biases. And some of those biases are probably universal.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

The rule of thirds depends on the canvas or photograph which is nearly always rectangular, and so comes out of the constraints of a medium, rather than being inate or absolute as such.

No way! This applies to everything !

Rule of thirds balance (just one example here) is not nearly always constrained to a rectangular 'canvas'. It is a balance of proportion. I see everything in this way. It is simply a matter of being able to make the distinction.

And I suppose as the topic is 'Aesthetic intelligence' my argument would turn to me to state, I have it. To be able to see in an artistic way.

I was born being able to see things in a way that meant I could tweak a small element to enhance the pleasing nature of the visual experience. The fine motor skills were also there, and were enhanced with training. I believe there is a genetic component to having this vision innately - but it can also be learned. 

Anyway not sure what my point is, other than I think some of these rules are consistent. 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

I will add though, strickly speaking, while I think the principals of easthetics are consistent, they aren't inherent to reality ie direct experience. Just in my view.

[Joshe]

On 1/15/2026 at 2:05 PM, integral said:

Worked as a web designer for many years and you always end up working with some of your clients who have horrendous taste, and they gravitate towards things that convert really badly. They do not understand how a thing makes them feel and the level of beauty something is at.

You might think this is completely subjective. And it's not. You can have different categories of things, but they will always be a hierarchy from a lower end of aesthetics to a higher end of aesthetics.

If you have super low aesthetic taste, you're deeply out of tune with how things make you feel and you have huge gaps in your sense making. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case but it's as clear as day when you interact with people they're aesthetic Intelligence closely relates to their level of consciousness.

Your level of consciousness and your aesthetic intelligence are closely connected.

The more conscious you are the finer you could see every aesthetic qualities to something.

There's many insights here that I haven't had yet to really understand why a person's level of consciousness is so directly linked to aesthetics. 

The most annoying thing is you can never communicate to them that they're wrong. 😑 LMAO

I feel you. I've done a good bit of visual design work and it's a pain in the ass trying to explain decisions to clueless people. I can't stand when they're like "change it to blue" when it should be neutral.

One thing I could never understand is why most B2B and enterprise designs (like Salesforce) are almost always shit compared to something like a polished SaaS app. But then I learned it's intentional. B2B doesn't like fancy and they tolerate imperfection and boring much more than other domains,. So what you might call "bad" design in one domain can be good and convert better in another. That didn't sit well with me because I'm like "NO!!! You cannot do that!!" 

On some level though, once you get past basic design fundamentals, a lot of it is subjective and designers often get carried away being concerned with minor details. 

To your main point: there are plenty of talented designers who are not what you might call "conscious". I've seen no connection aside from the general level of competence that often accompanies higher consciousness. 

I've collected thousands of screenshots of great designs and just marveled at them and used them for inspiration in trying to create my own designs. That process + learning design fundamentals and tips I think is sufficient. Eventually, you know a good design when you see one. I feel like most people are capable of this, regardless of conscious development. 

One cool thing having visual design sensitivity is that you can tell how much effort people are putting into things. For example, the actualized.org website isn't responsive in the year 2026. lol.

Edited January 18 by Joshe