Brendan Appe

Updated my personal site. Grateful that this space no longer needs to function as a job-seeking portfolio. Back to being a place for exploring without optimizing for... anything.

Illustration is my 25 year plan: becoming an older, slightly curmudgeonly designer. Hopefully still useful?

I think the idea that taste is an essential skill and a necessary input into good design is often elitist and quietly anti-humanist. One of my hopes for 2026 is that we begin to reposition this… | Bre... I think the idea that taste is an essential skill and a necessary input into good design is often elitist and quietly anti-humanist. One of my hopes for 2026 is that we begin to reposition this belief...

Taste is a loaded term because it smuggles class, power, and moral judgment into what appears to be a neutral preference. It then presents that judgment as universal, when it's not.