Earlier today Elliot Jay Stocks commented on Twitter

I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs.

His comment created a great little debate on Twitter.

Personally, I agree with Elliot. I think it’s odd that some Web Designers can’t code their own designs, but only three years ago I was one of those designers. I had been a Graphic Designer for ten years before I ever typed a line of code. Finally learning HTML and CSS in order to code my own designs was the best decision I ever made. Here are five good reasons why I think designers should code.

Reason 1

The combination of a designing in Photoshop (or whatever software you use) along with HTML & CSS is greater than the sum of their parts. Many people view code as a restriction to a designer but when I learnt to code I found it liberating. Far from being a restriction, it opened up a whole new realm of creative possibilities. Basically, learning code made me a much better Web Designer.

Reason 2

Your designs will be executed in exactly the way you want them too. If you completely split the duties of designing and coding there inevitably comes a point in a project where the coder ends up doing bits of design, at which point the design can start to degrade. This isn’t the fault of the coder; it’s just real life. It’s just not practical to go back to the designer for a Photoshop mock-up every time a new section of the site needs to be designed/added.

Reason 3

The bridge between designing in Photoshop and code is relatively small. It’s even arguable that HTML & CSS is more a designer’s tool than developer’s. I know some people will say thing like “but you don’t see architects building their designs” etc etc, but in their case it’s far more obvious why.

For example, an architect who wished to build their house after designing it would then have to learn how to drive a JCB, lay bricks, be a carpenter etc. Comparing an Architect and a Web Designer just doesn’t make any sense in this context.

However, when I design a website, after designing the homepage in photoshop I’ll often carry on designing in HTML & CSS. It’s at this point where designing and building almost become one and the same. This is something quite unique to Web and Graphic Design. It just can’t happen when your designing products, cars or buildings.

So, if you’re a designer who doesn’t code it might seem like a daunting task to learn, I know, I’ve been there… but it’s not that hard. Learn it, you won’t regret it.

Reason 4

It’s massively time saving to be able to both design and code. Like I said in my last point, once you reach the point in a project where you feel comfortable designing in the browser you instantly cut out all those Photoshop mock-ups you would have handed over to a coder, only to re-do in code what you’ve already done in Photoshop.

Reason 5

If you’re a designer who can’t code, learning code opens up a whole new world of job opportunities, whether you’re looking for freelance gigs or permanent  employment. One of the main reasons I learnt to code was because I was so frustrated by the lack of opportunities for designers who can’t code.

In Conclusion

Obviously there are times when it’s just not practical or the best use of a designer’s time to be forever updating a website, especially with larger projects but on the whole if you care about how the content on your site is presented I think you get the best results with a designer that knows how to code.

What do you guys reckon?

Being inspired is vital fuel for any web designer. You can always pore over the CSS galleries but you’ll probably think of more original ideas if you look offline for your inspiration.

Offline Inspiration

It’s cool to be inspired by websites you see on CSS galleries but I think using these sites as your main source of inspiration can sometimes lead to bland web design. Graphic Design offline can offer new and original ways of looking at web design. It’s my opinion that there’s still massive ground to be explored in the crossover between offline and online design.

The most obvious places to look for offline inspiration is in books, magazines, shop windows, posters, postcards, adverts etc. When you’re sitting in front of your computer screen you don’t always have these things to hand but luckily for us we have the internet! People the world over are taking pictures, saving images they like and storing them on sites like FFFFound, Flickr and Image Spark. This means we have offline inspiration at out finger tips all day everyday.

I’ve had a little look around and selected ten pieces of offline design that I think make great inspiration for web design. Enjoy.

Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

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Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

Go to source of image.

I think I’ve mentioned this before… but I think music can massively inspire and influence design.

The Musical Effect

There’s something about working to music that changes the process of design. For me it has a sort of ‘unlocking’ affect. It seems to open up my mind to design possibilities that without music wouldn’t enter my head.

Like in film the mix of music and imagery can have a huge emotional affect on a designer which can influence their decision making and ultimately their design.

What’s also cool is that different styles of music can influence  your designs in different ways… and everyone has different tastes in music which makes it really interesting!

Spotify Playlists

Using the wonder that is Spotify I thought it’d be fun to share one of my playlists that inspires my work. It’s called Uplifting Alternative Durge and I’d describe it as just that. You can listen to it here.

For those who don’t have access to Spotify I’m really sorry. I’ve listed the tracks below in case you want to compile it yourself.

• Geraldine – Glasvegas
• inní mér syngur vitleysingur – Sigur Ros
• Signs – Bloc Party
• So Close – Six by Seven
• The National Anthem – Radiohead
• No Cars Go – Arcade Fire
• This is a Question – Hope of the States
• Crawl – Kings of Leon
• Meet me in the Bathroom – The Strokes
• Jump in the Pool – Friendly Fires
• Rest my Chemistry – Interpol
• Mirrorball – Elbow
• I Stand Corrected – Vampire Weekend
• Blue Ridge Mountains – Fleet Foxes
• Fake Empire – The National
• Unrecorded – M83
• Playground Love – Air

It would be great to hear what music inspires you guys. Feel free to post your playlists here too.

I’ve been using this online tool for saving inspirational images for ages now. It’s called Image Spark and just thought I’d tell you about it in case it’s something you’ve never come across.

Notice: Mike will be speaking about “How to Break Web Design Conventions” at The Future of Web Design New York City on November 17th.

How Does it Work?

Image Spark was developed by Teehan+Lax and is like an online scrapbook. Once you’ve opened an account (it’s free) you can upload images to your library from the web or your computer. You can do this in a number of ways using either the Firefox Plugin, Mac App or browser-based uploader.

Image Spark allows you to tag your images, make them public and private. It’s great because it dispenses with the need to bookmark an endless amount of web pages and it’s very easy to use.

You can also create moodboards (each user can have two) for when you’re working on a project and you want to compile certain images as inspiration for that project.

You can also view other users library of images, so the site in itself is a massive source of inspiration. I often copy images from other users libraries to mine.

Go and check it out!

Colour is a powerful tool when it comes to design. It’s fun to work with and when you get it right it can really make a design.

I’m no colour expert so I’m not going to bore you with any theory but having worked with colour for a long time I there are a few really simple tips I’ve picked up along the way.

Editor’s note: We’ll be covering topics like Typography, CSS3, HTML5, Microformats and how to work with clients at The Future of Web Design Tour. Tickets are only £59.

1. Choosing a Colour Palette

Keep it simple, or go crazy. In between is no good.

I find using two or three colours plus some neutral tones works well for general use. Try picking two main colours – say a red and a blue then use tones of those two colours plus your neutral colour. If you start adding more colours without thinking, it can make your design less distinctive.

I’ve always been drawn to multi-coloured artwork. Sometimes this really works. Using all the colours of the rainbow (for want of a more technical phrase) can look stunning.

2. Steal all the Colour Charts

If you like being hands on it’s fun to mix and match colours using the Dulux colour charts you get in hardware stores. With minimal effort you can quickly get some colour schemes going. This is really good for when you’re meeting in a group and don’t want to huddle round your computer.

3. Use Colour to Communicate

Colour speaks to a viewer just as much as the copy.

Firstly it creates the mood of your design. So think about what your design is trying to communicate and pick a colour palette that you think expresses that mood.

Secondly, there are colour conventions. For example if you have a sale in a shop window it might be an idea to use a red and white graphic to communicate this, or at least use one flat bright colour with white. This just make sense because without even reading it we know what it’s saying. So if you want to break a colour convention like this you should have a good reason for doing so. I experienced a real life example of a broken colour convention very recently and it wasn’t pretty.

The other day I picked up a packet of crisps with out looking at what flavour they were. I thought they were Salt ‘n’ Vinegar flavour because the text on the packet was a medium-light blue. It turned out they were just salted! Needless to say I was very disappointed. Everyone knows that medium-light blue is Salt ‘n’ Vinegar flavour (at least in the UK), so they shouldn’t mess with that convention. This is just one example of how colour speaks to us and it’s something I think is important to keep in mind when designing.

4. Experiment and Have Fun with Colour

One thing that never fails me when colour backs me into a corner, is just going going a bit mad and experimenting with colour schemes you’d never normally try. It’s sometimes surprising what happens. I know this isn’t very scientific but it’s lots of fun.

5. Online Resources

Failing all of the above there a bunch of online resources that can help you choose a colour palette for you design. Here are a couple of the better ones.

• kuler.adobe.com
• colorschemedesigner.com
• http://www.colorschemer.com

Conclusion

Colour is fun and doesn’t have to be complicated. There are a ton of more complex articles on the web about colour theory but personally I find these articles boring and uninspiring. You don’t have to be an expert on colour to use it well.

If you have some time to spend thinking about colour just look online, in books, on posters at what other people do. You’ll feel way more inspired and informed about what colour palette to use on your next design than if you start reading lengthy articles on colour theory… unless you’re a painter or printer in which case the colour theory might come in handy :)

Above all have fun with colour.

Here are a bunch of designs I think use colour well.

Editor’s note: We’ll be covering topics like Typography, CSS3, HTML5, Microformats and how to work with clients at The Future of Web Design Tour. Tickets are only £59.

All web designers want their work to stand out from the crowd … but what does that take?

In this post I’ll pick a few sites I think pack a punch and I’ll explain why.

[Editor's Note: Mike Kus, Andy Clarke, Brendan Dawes, Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Simon Collison and more will be talking about Web Typography, Microformats, HTML 5, CSS3, Creativity and more at The Future of Web Design Tour.]

Less is more

Keep it simple. It’s easy and tempting to try and fill a web page with too much information. Don’t be afraid of space on a page. I’ve lost count of how many times people have asked me “Why is there a space there”? I’m sure this is just pure web page conditioning. People don’t ask the same question in print design. We’re so used to seeing web pages packed with info that when we see a space it looks strange.

Space is good. Let your design breathe.

Also carefully choosing the colour palette for your site can have a massive impact. I think these three examples demonstrate use of colour and space beautifully.

Helveticons

Daffy’s

Annyas.com/screenshots

Images and Typography

Get creative with imagery and typography. Think in terms of poster or book design to further distance your site from the thousands of “Web 2.0″ style clone sites. I just love the typography in the RVLT site below. It’s in flash but even the page loading is beautiful… I wish it took a bit longer!

The fact that some of these site are in Flash doesn’t mean one can’t create just as powerful and effective site designs using just HTML and CSS.

RVLT

Serial Cut

Black Estate

Buck current web trends

Web design is drowing in trends: Gradients, subtle 3D effects, shadows, glows, textures. They all have a place but if you really want to stand out from the crowd do something different. Avoid the current trends, experiment and maybe even set trends!

I also loved the way in which Tim Van Damme threw conventional web trends out of the window in his redesign of 24 Ways. It was also cool to see him experiment with RGBA and CSS3.

Both the 24 Ways design and the Clap Clap design below show how websites can still be beautiful while ditching current web trends.

24 Ways

Clap Clap

Details and Execution

One sure fire thing that will help your site stand out from the crowd is your attention to detail. For example putting real effort into the composition of the page will shine through. Elliot Jay Stocks demonstrates this perfectly with the latest version of his site.

The Boutique Cycles and Checkland Kindleysides both show how attention to detail just raises the bar that little bit higher.

Elliot Jay Stocks

Boutique Cycles

Checkland Kindleysides

So what do you guys think? What makes a website stand out from the crowd? What other sites can you suggest that already do this? It’d be great to here your thoughts.

[Editor's Note: Mike Kus, Andy Clarke, Brendan Dawes, Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Simon Collison and more will be talking about Web Typography, Microformats, HTML 5, CSS3, Creativity and more at The Future of Web Design Tour.]

Editor’s Note: Mike will be speaking at FOWD NYC on “Bucking Trends and Breaking Conventions”.

On the July 9th 2009 we launched a complete redesign of Carsonified and the Think Vitamin blog. I thought it’d be fun to tell you the story of how the new site design evolved and came to life. It was an interesting journey.

As the designers among you will know, working on your personal or company site can be a nightmare. It’s always super hard to get right … or finished. I did tons of design variations for the Carsonified site. I won’t show you every single one but I will show you all the significant stages the design went through.

This post isn’t so much about the final design as it’s about the journey I embarked on to get there … and I stopped off at some weird and wondrous places on the way. So lets start at the beginning.

The Brief

We’ve been talking about the redesign of Carsonified.com since December 2008. There wasn’t much of a brief but there were a few things the site had to do:

• The homepage had to communicate what we did.
• It had to express our company’s personality and beliefs.
• It had to include the following pages: Home, Events, Mission, Jobs, Contact and Team
• Think Vitamin was going to sit within the Carsonified site (whilst retaining it’s own identity).

The design of the site was down to me and as usual, Ryan gave me total creative freedom.

The Goals

My main goals from an aesthetic point of view were to make it striking, beautiful and to buck current web trends. It’s so important to me to feel like we’re pushing the boundaries of web design and what it is. I don’t always manage to do it but I need to try.

Stage One

These screen grabs are my first attempts at the new site design. I’ve been really inspired by clean, hard edged graphic design this year and I wanted to bring this into the Carsonified redesign. I’ve also been into large typography too. As you can see these designs are a bit crazy and I don’t even know if they’re any good or not but in a way that was the whole point. I was really trying to do something different and sometimes that means starting in places you sort of know the design will never end up.

I actually started to build some of these designs. One of the pages I built was a mission page. It was inspired by U2’s Zoo TV tour back in the early 90s. I had this idea of huge type, bold mission statement, TV fuzz and faded words in the background. So using an animated gif I made for the TV fuzz, and the Parallax effect for the words in the background, I created this mission page. You can check it out here: http://design.carsonified.com/zootv

Stage Two

These two designs came off the back of a project we were doing for a client. They didn’t feel the design I came up with was suitable for them so I let it influence the Carsonified site design for a moment. It didn’t really come to anything unfortunately.

I was going to get the team to jump around like the guy in this mock up. (I don’t think the team we’re too keen on doing this!) These designs were very much an inspiration for the Stack Over Devdays site.

Stage Three

These designs were a fresh start. Using fractured colour blocks and customised Helvetica I created these mock ups. The typography was influenced by the slides I made for my talk at FOWD London 2009. To be honest I’m not sure where I was going with this but I still like some of the graphics here now.

Stage Four

Having not found my way with the previous design I decided to just punt out a couple pages and hope for the best. I don’t recommend this as the results aren’t normally that good … as you can see.

Stage Five

Still intent on retaining a very graphical style I produced a number of designs along these lines. The idea being that the shapes would shift around in the background when you move the browser window. I’d would have used the Parallax effect to do this. It was sort of influenced by the Channel 4 stings in which everyday objects make up the number ‘4′ when you view them from a certain angle. This is something I’d like to use the Parallax effect for in the future.

Something that is dawning on me at this stage is that the hard graphic style I want to use so much probably isn’t right for the company. Hard edged and graphical just aren’t Carsonified.

Stage Six

Not completely giving up on the graphical approach I try to breathe life into the design by bringing in more colour and generally trying to capture the Carsonified personality.

One of the main things I’m trying to communicate on the site is our love and passion for what we do – hence the use of the word ‘love’ and the hearts. I think it starts to happen here in parts but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Stage Seven

I was starting to like the direction I was taking in the previous collection of screenshots but I felt they were perhaps too cold and still lacked the Carsonified personality. I spent some time putting together these ideas which I really really didn’t get on with … although they do have a relationship with the final designs.

Stage Eight

I decided to back to where I was at the end of Stage Six. I brought some hand drawn illustrations into the design to give it a more human feel. I worked up two designs for the home page that I was pretty happy with and one of these was going to be the home page – probably the second design. Looking back now though, I prefer the first.

It was decided: The Homepage was finally done.

There was a Problem

Although the home page had been decided on and I had a direction for the rest of the site, I still wasn’t happy.

That evening I went out for a run and as usual I was thinking about the redesign, hoping for a flash of inspiration. Then I got it. I ran past the Gap store in the town centre and saw these sale posters. There was something so hard hitting about their simplicity:

Stage Nine

I went home and spent the next three hours putting together the designs below. They’re almost as they appear on the finished site. The content just fell into place and I knew I had the new design in the bag.

I decided to go with the two colour per page thing as it would create the biggest visual impact. I choose to use a different background colour on each page because I think it says something about us as a comapny. I’m not entirely sure what that is but it definitely says it. It was slightly influenced by my memories of the way United Colours of Benetton used to use simple flat colours in their graphics.

I had probably spent six days designing everything else up until this point and then I cranked out the final design concept  in a couple of hours.

Stage Ten

From this point I pretty much knew what I needed to do. Draw … a lot!

One of the things I really liked about this new homepage design was the illustration of the real heart. It struck a chord with me.

Carsonified if a very human company. We’re all about people, and using the real heart illustration as opposed to a symbol of a heart brought that home for me. It seemed completely natural to carry on the theme of illustrated vital organs to convey this message. The effect is further enhanced by the choice of copy that accompanies each illustration.

The Think Vitamin Blog

As you know Think Vitamin now sits within the Carsonified site. Think Vitamin hasn’t really been redesigned, it’s just had a makeover. It needed to retain its identity and colour scheme as it’s a brand in itself.

Having the blog within the Carsonified site took a bit of getting used to but it’s working well now. Greg did a great job coding the WordPress theme and we continue to update and tweak the site now.

Conclusions

It’s been a great experience redesigning Carsonified. It was a slog at first but we’re all really happy with the end result. It’s always difficult designing something so close to your heart but one thing I’ve learned from this is that time restrictions can definitely be a good thing. To much time can mean too many explorations and that just becomes a road to nowhere.

There are still a couple of pages to be added to the new site. We’ll be adding a proper ‘contact’ page (we didn’t have time to finish it for the launch). Secondly we’ll be adding a ‘projects’ page which will give details of all the cool web related projects we do here at Carsonified.

Anyway I hope you found this journey interesting. It’d be great to hear your thoughts.

Last week I was presented with a design brief. It was to design and build a site to promote our new Stack Overflow DevDays event that’s happening this October.

Ryan gave me a rough wireframe detailing the content that needed to be included. The layout and design was down to me. As usual I didn’t have a bloody clue where to start… and I didn’t have long to do it. The initial hope was that I get it all done in just over 2 days.

So I thought it might be interesting to share with you the various stages of design the site went through before arriving at the finished design.

Here’s the wireframe Ryan put together for me

Ok so here goes.

Stage 1

Stack Overflow DevDays is mainly gonna be a US tour + a gig in London. So I want a map or something to show where the dates are gonna be. I was going to use a flat map but decided a globe was cooler. I drew the globe based on one I bought from istockphoto.com

(Note: Dates and cities shown in these designs were just provisional last week. See stackoverflow.carsonified.com for actual dates & cities)

Stage 2

I have a play with the globe I bought from istockphoto.

Stage 3

I’ve sort of decided I’m gonna use the illustrated globe. So I colour it and experiment with large city names in the background. I’m thinking the globe will be the focal point of the page, so I’m working from that outwards.

Stage 4

I decide it needs some texture and add some descriptive copy. I’m ditching the large city names too.

Stage 5

I’m not feeling that good about the design at the moment as it’s shit. I’m grasping at straws and adding stuff in the hope it’ll come good.

Stage 6

I make a compete change of direction that doesn’t come to much but at least clears my head.

Stage 7

I’ve now decided to take a slightly more graphical approach. One of the problems I’m having at this stage is trying to place all the logos… Carsonified, Stack Overflow and Devdays logo/title.

Stage 8

I’m now trying to make the “Devdays” more of a feature and experimenting with colour. I like the yellow, grey and black :)

Stage 9

I bring the city photos into the design. The reason it’s a picture of New York at this stage is just because that’s what I have lying around on my machine.

Stage 10

This is the breakthrough moment. I know at this point that it’s all going to be ok. I stop sweating.
A few things happened here. Firstly, I sacked the Carsonified logo from the top of the page and now it says “Carsonified presents”. This takes away the logo placement headache. Secondly I manage to make a feature out of “Devdays”. I got this idea idea from my FOWD Slides… I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier! Thirdly I can see a content structure falling into place. Thank f*** for that!
Believe it or not it took me the best part of 2 days to get this far. The reason there’s not that much physical design to show for it is because I spend just as much time thinking about the design as actually outputing designs. I’m now behind on the project big time… but what can you do? I tell Ryan – he understands :)

Stage 11

I Experiment with a new colour scheme which I really like and also go back to using the more graphical globe from istockphoto. This green and red colour scheme is influenced from a safe sex advert that appears on Spotify.

I also decide at this point that I’m going to use the Parallax Effect thingy. It was something I was gonna save for the new Carsonified site design but I couldn’t wait. Besides I think I’ll just use it again in a different way.

Stage 12

I finish designing the content and change the colour scheme. I think I’ll go with this one.

Stage 13

@keirwhitaker calls over to me… “Hey Mike, have you seen that safe sex ad on Spotify? It has a really nice colour scheme.” At which point I’m like “yeah” and promptly open up the previous version of my design to show Keir. I then realise it’s way better than the washed out aqua version (in my opinion). Job Done :)

Stage 14

I just have to build it now… which is a welcome break from designing :)

The Design and build took me just over 4 days in the end. Twice as long as planned… but I guess design isn’t an exact science… it just takes you where it takes you… or you take it.

You can see this finished site here stackoverflow.carsonified.com

I hope you found this interesting and I’d love to hear how this compares with your experiences.

As part of my talk at the ‘Future of Web Design’ conference in London last week  I played this short film. It’s basically sped up footage of me making my slides for my talk.

Why I did it

1. I think it’s interesting to see the design process as it happens. Quite a lot of the footage shows me working on designs that never made the deck. Every time I design something I find it hard and I worry about the outcome. I think it’s cool to show people that ideas just don’t fall onto the canvas.
2. I’ve seen this sort of thing done before and I found it inspiring. I guess I hope you find this inspiring too :)

The music

The music I used is a track called Með suð í eyrum by Sigur Ros from their album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. It’s an amazing record and I suggest you all go out and buy it :)

Buy it here: moourl.com/ydh2w
More info on Sigur Ros: sigurros.com

I’ve recently just finished updating Carsonified’s 2008 ‘Future of’ event sites. So while the Event Planners iron out the finer details of the forthcoming events my focus is turned to the design of the 2009 event sites, which I get to design from scratch.

So where do I start?

We’ve already had a couple of meetings about the sites and we’ve set out the technical and functional criteria. The design is down to me.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the process of design because to be honest I’m still searching for one that works.

I’ve designed a load of projects over the years with some half decent results along the way… but using only a very loose design process I normally grind and crash my way to the project’s conclusion. So I’m eager (especially with the 2009 sites in front of me) to find design process that works.

So after some thought I’ve come up with a five point design process plan.

1. Just think

Put on some inspiring tunes and just think about your project in the loosest possible way (at this point anything goes, the crazier the ideas the better).

I sometimes find going for a run with some tunes for company gives me a ton of ideas. Thinking in bed before you go to sleep is quite thought-provoking too.

2. Look for inspiration

Make a note of your initial ideas and with them in mind hit the internet. Scour the web for anything related to your ideas and bookmark anything that catches your eye. Do the same with your bookshelf, newspapers and magazines. One thing I find helps is looking at non design related literature as you can often stumble across an unexpected visual gem when you’re least expecting it. It’s also useful to take a step back from current design trends when looking for inspiration as I sometimes find it’s easy for a project to start looking a bit like everything else out there. Remember if you find that perfect bit of inspiration in the back of some old 80’s gatefold album sleeve you can bet your bottom dollar that no-one else’s design is going to look like yours.

3. Sketch out rough designs

Spend some time sketching out your ideas in your notepad/sketchbook. Try and avoid jumping straight onto your computer (I’m guilty of this big time!).

I find going straight to your computer can give you a sort of ‘design tunnel vision’…basically meaning it’s easy to get stuck in a rut with your first design that wasn’t really thought through.

4. Start designing proper

So after sketching out a bunch of ideas you should have a much clearer idea of what direction you want to take your design. So designing in photoshop or xhtml/css etc should be a much easier process. Also once you feel confident with the route your taking in your design try not to get bogged down in minor details at this stage (I’m also guilty of this), you can do the the detail later when you happy with the bigger picture.

5. The devil’s in the detail

Hopefully now your photoshop and xhtml/CSS is going swimmingly and you’re nearing the end… well this is the time to pay attention to those small details as it’s often the attention to detail that makes the difference between good and great. If there’s something nagging you about a certain part of your design and you sort of know you should revisit it but don’t know if you can be bothered – just do it… It’ll be worth it in the end.

So what do you reckon? Is this a load of rubbish, is it just obvious?… or is there some value in it?
Does anyone have any thoughts or tips they could add? :)