| name | taste |
| description | Apply restrained design taste to a UI. Use when the user wants the interface to feel tasteful, elegant, minimal, or "not overdesigned" — favors simplicity, whitespace, a tight palette, subtle motion, and removing decoration that doesn't earn its place. |
Taste
Good taste is mostly subtraction. This pass makes a UI feel calm,
confident, and intentional.
When to use
Invoke when the user wants the design to feel tasteful, elegant, refined, or
less cluttered.
Heuristics
-
Remove before you add. If an element doesn't serve the user, cut it.
Borders, shadows, gradients, and icons must each earn their place.
-
One accent, lots of neutral. A single confident brand color against a
well-considered neutral scale beats a rainbow. Use accent sparingly for
emphasis and interaction.
-
Whitespace is a feature. Let content breathe. Crowded ≠ rich.
-
Type does the heavy lifting. A clear type scale and good line-height
create hierarchy without decoration. Limit to 1–2 families.
-
Subtle motion. Prefer 150–250ms eases and small movements. If an
animation calls attention to itself, it's probably too much.
-
Consistency reads as quality. Same radius, same spacing units, same
button shapes everywhere. Inconsistency looks like a bug.
-
Restraint with effects. Glass, glow, blur, parallax — at most one
"wow" moment per view, supporting the content, never competing with it.
Anti-patterns to fix
- Multiple competing accent colors.
- Drop shadows on everything.
- Gradients used as flat fills.
- Bold + italic + underline + color all at once.
- Animations on load that delay the user seeing content.
Output
Note what you removed/simplified and why — taste is visible in the cuts.
