This goes to one of the fundamental issues surrounding the martial arts, does the art shape you or do you shape the art? Different arts have different approaches. Personally, I think that it is better to shoot for a recognized standard. If you belong to a recognized style or organization, then the organization will put forth the standard. After a long period of time, decades, you get close to that standard. I don't think you ever reach that standard, which for me would be a state of perfection, but the standard is there nonetheless. But in shooting for that standard, your own personality and spirit if you will comes through. So in that sense, your personal style within the style will come through, but through the biomechanics of the particular style.
Then you have the other end of the spectrum, the Jeet Kune Do approach for want of a better term, where individuality becomes the accepted policy, wherein there is either no standard or very loose standards. However, what I find with this type of situation or practice is that the basics often get lost and those who are too young or still in the beginning stages of development feel they can and should take creative license with what they learned or perhaps more accurately, with what they once were shown. Then you end up with the situation that you have observed in Tang Soo Do, wherein whole sections of forms are lopped off and perhaps even substituted with some movements from another totally different philosophically incompatible style.
