I ran a design agency for eight and a half years, but I’m not a designer. What I have is the eye, enough to be dangerous, enough to know exactly what’s wrong and why. What I’m missing is the practice. When I look at my own work, it’s solid. It’s serviceable, like a decent junior-to-intermediate designer would make. It’s basically what I’d produce with my own hands. But my taste is way ahead of my skills, and that gap is the whole problem.
The interesting thing is the gap is fixable from either side. You can grind the craft up to meet the taste, or you can use the taste to direct someone, or something, that has the craft. The eye is the rarer thing. The eye is what lets you say ‘no, not that’ a hundred times until the thing is right. The hands you can rent.
Is taste or skill the rarer thing, and which one are you actually short on?