Should Designers Code?

Hello, welcome to Inspect, a show about design and development. And in this week's show, we're going to be talking about the age old debate of whether designers should code. Let's suffocate both of us to cite our careers as designers, and both of us do do code now. So we've definitely got our opinions, but we'll try and approach this from both sides of the argument, why they should and why they shouldn't.

So this has been one of those topics that comes up, you know, all the time. It's been debated hundreds and hundreds of times you go on Google and there's millions of search results related to this same question should designers get. There's plenty of reasons why they should, plenty of reasons why they shouldn't. So I think if we go for reasons why we think we shouldn't first, why we think there should be a clear divide between the designers and the developers of the team.

Let's see where that takes us. So what do you think? What's your opinion? We've got, I've worked in teams before where you've got dedicated individuals who focus on certain aspects of the project, and that kind of makes things very, very easy, very, very easy to manage your different aspects of a project that you're working on.

So if you're a designer and you're given set tasks, design-related tasks, you know what you're going to be dealing with, you know exactly what's required yourself. And you know, you're, let's just say, your design director or project manager knows that you're the vibe responsible for certain aspects of design and will sign the work to you accordingly. And that's it. And it's just, you know, it's just for designers, it's easy for them to manage their workload, not having to think outside of the box too much in terms of, you know, I'm going to have to apply a bit of code here, or you know, on this project, on this website, on this app, or anything like that, it is what it is, and they just strictly just focus on that particular task.

And that, you know, that's a benefit there for anyone managing a design or a project, because, you know, you've got the individual responsible for their task at hand. So, yeah, for me, it's just streamlining there, you know, it's a big advantage, I think. Yeah. So it's actually sort of taking away focus from their day job, if they're trying to think about coding as well.

Yeah. You know, a designer can focus on literally just, you know, the task at hand on the course skills. Exactly. You're not all over the place.

You know, I mean, you'll just focus on that task and, you know, you're not going to have anything else. Yeah, because it's only really in this industry where those two roles do get crossed over a lot, you don't ever hear of, you know, should people in finance learn HR or something like that. Oh, yeah. You don't expect any other industries to cross over as much, but I suppose because of design and code, obviously go hand in hand quite a lot.

So it comes up, but there's definitely benefits to having that clear divide, where people can just focus on their task. And of course, like, it takes a different type of person to be a designer and a coder as well. And coding may not necessarily fit, you know, everyone's personality, all the way they think. Some people need that sort of creative, creative license to basically just do what they feel is right for this project in terms of design without having to work to the restrictions of what's possible and what's was doable on the platform in terms of code.

Yeah, definitely. Whereas, you know, programmers maybe think about finer details a little bit more and a bit more collaborative. So it depends on your personality type as well. If you've got a little bit of both of that in you, then it could be something that fits, but if not, then that's one reason to for designers just focus on what they're doing.

No, definitely. I think people would say to me, you know, as I've been going through this whole journey from design to development, just focus on what you're good at, focus on your core skills and of course strengths and improve them and keep improving them and keep practicing and just keep making them better and better and better. But, you know, I've found reasons to implement, you know, learning design, sorry, learning development and learning how to code into my skill set. Because I'm a solopreneur running my own business, if you like, I'm a freelancer and I'm basically all aspects of it.

So, you know, like for me, it was, yeah, you know, be focused on design, people used to tell me, stick with it. It's what you're really, really good at. Don't bother doing anything else. This is what you really should do.

But try and translate your print design, which is what I started off with over to digital design. And which is all great. And, you know, that worked up to a point. So, you know, definitely, I think there's that, it's me as well, I'm a creative person.

So that's the way I kind of went. I sort of stuck with what people said. And up until a point where I sort of found, you know, okay, we've got to learn some new skills. Yeah, but then on the flip side of that, where I work, we have a clear divide really between the designers and the developers.

And I was working on a project recently where we had a very short deadline where we had to turn around just basically a proof of concept. So it wasn't a major project really, just a proof of concept, which was to turn around in a couple of days. And there was myself who was going to be doing the front end and then we had a separate designer who was based in one of the German offices. And this designer, he doesn't do any coding himself.

I don't think he, I don't think he's fully aware of what's possible as well. I think he is, he's very separated from the actual development team. But what he allowed him to do was create quite a very, very complete full design, website design, multiple pages within just a couple of hours. He worked, you know, he allowed him to really just focus on his skills, not worry too much about how things are going to be implemented.

You know, he wasn't going too crazy. He knows this at the end of the day, this is a website that we were designing. So he had, yeah, those things in mind. But it just allowed him to just, you know, not worry about, okay, if I put this menu here, how is this menu going to sit alongside this paragraph, you know, are these, these going to clash with each other or is this image, you know, going to scale up?

Probably things like that. You know, you didn't really need to think about that too much. You could just focus on purely the visuals and what we ended up with was this, you know, amazing looking design in a very short amount of time. And then it was down to the development team to make it happen.

So yeah, I think it's definitely, it's definitely good for a designer to just shut off from that world, really. But then it depends on the project as well. If a designer is working on something that is specifically for an app or a particular device, then maybe you do need to know, you know, the constraints, have some constraints in mind. For something like what you're saying with print design, then, you know, there's definitely clearly no need to even know about coding if your role doesn't even require it at all.

Yeah, exactly. I think that example you've given this is perfect for that scenario. And I think for me, for my situation, I gained scenarios where in the first stage of my project would be to, you know, start the design work, you know, wireframe, create some sketches and things like that, and then start creating actual designs on each of the pages for the website. And that's a fun part for me.

I really enjoy that part of the project because it's a creative aspect. So I've got full creative license to be as creative as I like or be as simple as I want. Use nice colors, nice layouts and just be really, really clever with it. And then comes the coding and development part and building templates and integrating those templates into the WordPress.

And a lot of that becomes very, very tedious and I tend to lose focus on a project when I'm doing that. Because for me, it's just a case of what I see to get done now. Right? And it's spending a lot of time and effort on getting things working.

You know, one thing about coding is you're going to run into a lot of issues with, you know, your code not working correctly and, you know, things on, you know, templates on looking right. And then you're working on from mobile first, then you're looking at tablets and desktops and making sure everything's looking perfect, right? And that really winds me up. It's probably the same for other front-end developers out there.

It really does wind me up because I've spent a lot of time doing a design and then I'm spending a lot of time coding it and making sure it's all, you know, pixel perfect, responsibly. That's a lot of time and effort and it's a lot of headache. And for me, it's the case of being, I just wish I could just get this over and done with. And I'd really get the project out there.

And yeah, so, you know, it is a pain. It really is sometimes. And yeah, that's where I've gone out there and found a developer, a person who just codes, right? He's like 90% coder.

And he has a bit of, you know, aesthetic skills there, some design skills, but this guy just focuses on design. So that kind of alleviates it on me. So now I can see the point that we're talking about earlier, focusing on your given tasks and just using your course fence. You said you better find a coder and then you said you found this is purely on design?

No, you focus, he focuses purely on code and development. Okay. So you focus purely on the design now? Yeah, I'm purely designed and on certain projects, so it's a big project that I'm working on.

Then I'll do all the design work and then I'll pass it on to him and then he'll just go ahead and start creating the page templates and start doing the coding. And do you find, even though that you do know how to code yourself, do you find that when you're designing now, you're thinking about the code in mind? It's there. It's always there.

Definitely. Yeah. Before, it wasn't because before I started coding, you never thought about it like that, right? You just thought, right, this is as creative and as really nice as possible.

And then you didn't realize, okay, how's the developer going to implement this? How are they going to do this? How are they going to do that? And then they're probably thinking, oh, he didn't think this designer didn't think about, you know, they still think about that.

And these kind of things above the fold as a big issue years ago. So things like that. It's a creep up. Yeah.

I think that's one of the reasons why it's for designers is why it could be good to not know how to code because it could sort of slice all your creativity a little bit. It's a fine line, isn't it? Because it's very good to know both skills, but there's plenty of benefits to it. But some of the drawbacks are enough to just put people off and to think that, you know, it's better to separate these two skills.

And let's not forget, you know, if someone new to this, it just takes time as well. You know, if someone's a designer and they want to then start learning to code, where is that time, that learning time going to be coming from? That's something that you need to think about. Because it's not something that you can ideally just pick up, you know, along the way.

You need to spend some time to really learn about HTML structure, about CSS, what's possible in CSS? Because, yeah, not everything is, you know, different browsers, what's possible there. Is JavaScript going to come into this? Do you start thinking, as a designer, do you think about animation and interaction?

And then do you want to bring that into your coding as well? Yeah. So it could be quite a big learning curve. And that's another reason why it might put people off or why some people may need to just stay clear of it and just let the full-time code is worry about that and keep your job as a full-time designer.

Yeah, definitely. I think that's a good point. That's a very good point there. And you know, you can look at these advantages to having both skills, right?

So yeah, I think we're trying to find more, trying to find reasons not to. But I think both of us essentially, we feel like this is a good skill to have. So, yeah, I mean, years ago, back in the day, I used to be dead set against coding. I was like, I ain't touching that.

I'm not going to get involved with that stuff. You know, you coding people could do that kind of stuff. I'm going to stick to doing all my creative side of things and making sure everything is pretty. But saying that, I've kind of like crossed the RubyCon and I'm like, now all rounder.

So I've really loved, you know, enjoy coding. I enjoy, you know, working with CSS and HTML and JavaScript and also now. It was something that I never thought I'd want to touch. But, you know, because you can be creative with code as well, right?

Yeah, of course. And obviously, you know, we are web designers. There's plenty of designers out there who don't design for the web, you know, design for print or design for, or just logos, you know, plenty of logo designers out there who don't use it. Oh, yeah, loads.

Yeah. So it depends on the type of design work you do. If you are designing websites, then it's probably just good. That's worth having, whereas if most of your work is outside of the web, then it's probably just a nice to have.

But all right. So let's go over some of the reasons why we think design is definitely short-known to code as well. I think the most obvious one is that, you know, it just opens up so many opportunities for you. Yeah.

You know, a lot of companies these days, they're looking for these. So called unicorns who can do a little bit of everything, especially in smaller teams, smaller startups, where they might not have the budget to hire, you know, fight different people to do a very specific job as they're looking for a little bit crossover, where we started with Proma. You know, we were definitely a small team and we needed to get the work done. So all of us pitched in and we ordered a little bit of design, a bit of front and a bit of back end, bit of marketing.

And that's where our skills, both of us, you know, really started crossing over, wasn't it? So yeah. And just looking at job ball these days as well, although a job listing may say front end developer or may say UX designer, there's always something in the description where he'll say on a design job, on a design job posting where he'll say nice to have HTML, CSS job or some knowledge, some knowledge of CMSs and stuff like that. So yeah, we'll definitely open up some more doors.

Yeah, definitely. I see it as a competitive advantage when you're looking for a job. So if you do have, if you're a designer with some coding skills there, and you know, these jobs out there, you go for that and it gets selected for the interview that particular role, there's a very, very good chance that you're going to come up and talk. If anyone else who applies doesn't have that coding skill, coding skills or understanding code, there's a nice little, you know, wild card if you like to have.

So, you know, even if it's not even implementation, but understanding it is probably a good thing to have at a minimal, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, learning the basics, although it does take time, like we mentioned earlier, it's not actually that difficult. And there's plenty of free resources out there where you can, we can learn the basics, learn how to access and JavaScript. You've got things like code school, code academy, Udemy. And, yeah, there's a whole load of sites.

One of the previous episodes, or the podcast, it was episode 13, it was a listener question where the guy asked, if he's, how do you know he's a good developer? And in that episode, I shared a few resources on how you can sort of test your skills, where you can level up your skills and how you can test your skills. So, if someone is thinking about learning development, it's probably worth checking out episode 13. And, yeah, check out some of those resources.

Yeah, definitely. I'm always referring to various resources, especially code school, especially shopping up on, especially JavaScript. Because I don't use all the time, so it's something that I just go back to, you know, every week I've spent about an hour on it, and just start going through some of the basics again, just to refresh my understanding of it. But yeah, definitely those resources are so helpful.

Yeah. And, you know, you may even be good at it. So, if you're a good designer and you maybe have a little bit of a fear of writing the code, just give it a go. And you may enjoy it.

That's how I became a developer. I was a designer originally for about seven or eight years. And then there was a need in the company to just get some work done a bit quicker. And because we had a small team, I started pitching in with some CSS and HTML.

At that point, I didn't write any JavaScript. We had another developer who was handling that. But, you know, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed doing the layouts and completing and it just built up from there.

The more and more I did it, the more and more I enjoyed it. And now, you know, I'm a full-time developer really. Still do some design work here and there. But, you know, I had a complete career change just because I just tried it out, really.

Yeah. It worked out for me. It really sort of empowered me because I went so long, I want, you know, I sat on my business. And I couldn't just be a designer anymore because that's all my business could offer, design work.

And it was a case of people who come to me and say, okay, can you just design my website for me? And I'm going to take the designs and give someone else who's going to code it. How about if I try and learn how to code, you know, have that skill set? I can do all of it under one roof and I wouldn't have to, you know, find someone else or, you know, they'll have to go and find someone else in a code work.

I mean, it'd be hassle for your client to find someone else. And then obviously, if you're finding someone else that'll bump up your costs and could price you out of the project as well. Exactly. This is it.

So, you know, I kind of provide everything now. So, you know, that is starting from like, you know, logo and branding through to web design and then doing the whole front end development and then, you know, working with WordPress, building templates, e-commerce stuff, some PHPs in there as well. So, stuff that I've never wanted to touch, stuff that I'm not very comfortable with, PHP, you know, SQL and querying databases and things I've picked up. Just by, you know, googling questions with you and just picking up things from there and bookmarking those sort of solutions and then, you know, referring back to them and I'm working on things, you know, as I go along.

You just tend to find that the more you spend time on things that you're not very comfortable with, you know, the more you're going to become better at it and then you'll start to accept it more, I think, and allowing yourself to, you know, branch out. For me, I'm just, you know, it's all good. I'm not afraid of anything. I'll take on any kind of task.

I'm not afraid to, you know, say no. Yeah, exactly. If you don't know, if you don't know how to do it, you'll learn it. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely worth, yes, it's good skill to have, isn't it? And, you know, we mentioned earlier about how being a design own codes could potentially stifle your creativity, but it could also work in the opposite way as well. If you know the constraints limitations or possibilities of what can be done on the platform that you're designing for, then that could definitely improve your designs as well.

You know, if you know how SVGs work, for example, and then, you know, you could, you can use that to your advantage when you're designing things thinking that, okay, this, this factor image that I've got in the background is not going to be, it's not going to be saved out as a PNG, it's going to be saved as an SVG and it's going to be scalable. So I can use it here, here, here, here, or designing icons. Okay, I know that icons can be, you know, broken up into an icon font. So maybe I can, you know, design those in a certain way.

Even just a structure as well, you know, you're designing like a navigation and, and you know, you know how a navigation is built, then that can help you design the structure of your navigation as well. Yeah, referring back to our semantics episode. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, you know, you understand how a drop down menu is going to be structured with your basic understanding of HTML, then you design sides already there, you can design everything correctly and you'll know how that would be implemented as well. So, yeah, semantics, guys.

And also you can obviously do the implementation as well. So if you're trying to do a proof of concept or something and then you need to do a some sort of prototype, there's no reason why you can't design it, build a little prototype and say code pen or just even locally with some static content, do the HTML, do the CSS, show it to your client where there's a working example and get that sign off, you know, instead of just showing them a static image or a series of images. Yeah, why use to be clients just to show them like, you know, how a carousel or a drop down menu would work or a pop up. I'd go and send them links on example websites that are already doing that kind of thing.

And so then what I started doing off of that was, well, why don't I just like, I want to create like a playground, like, you know, code pen or something like that. And then just spend some time building these little, you know, bits of functionality. So drop down, pop up, just little things, very small things. So that way I'm learning and I'm doing it on a regular basis.

And then that way the client doesn't have to go and see, you know, if they're part of your websites and, you know, start getting, you know, distracted and stuff or this way, they're just focusing on the things that you've created for them using code pen or, you know, you're coding playground sandbox and then they can just, you know, get a better understanding of what it is you're trying to show them, right? So yeah, another example of that which I've had done a project recently, we've declined that working with, they've got a form with a file upload field on it. Now they want, they want it to be a custom looking field, which is fine. So, you know, it's not your native browser file upload, which is fine.

But they also want a clear button on there, because then the file upload field doesn't have a clear button natively. And the way that you have to clear it is by either resetting the whole form, or you need to basically click on the choose file button again and then hit cancel and then resets that field right. But that's a bit of a crap UX, right? So they wanted, once the file is uploaded, they wanted just a button to pay an extra bit with a little cross just to delete it.

Now, before I agreed to that design and I told them, I need to just research if this is available. Yeah, I did some, you know, hunting around on Stack Overflow on how to implement this, create myself a little code plane. It was completely unsilited, just had a file field with a little bit of a JavaScript showed to the client, I go, this is how it's going to work, this isn't going to look, but this is how it'll work. Are you happy with this UX of it?

And they were happy, so then we then implemented that into the design and got signed up straight away. And then also, because I already created that brief concept, when it came to actually building the project, it was already done. So you can get, you know, one step ahead and you can use your coding skills to help you get signed off on your design as well. Exactly, yeah.

Because I had that not been possible, I had I designed it in the way I wanted it to look. It would then fall onto either myself or someone else, another developer to then figure that out. And if it's not possible then, or not possible in the way that it's intended, then, you know, it just, you know, you're back to square one, you need to then go and update your designs, go and talk to your client again and get the whole process, you know, slide again. Yeah, that's happened to me in the past, trying to explain to a developer how, you know, for example, like a button has a hover effect on it, and it kind of depresses and, you know, those kind of states, and I've sort of shown them in a design, like four different steps of a button, and I've given that to the developer.

I've had to explain that, you know, this should be like a gradual transition between each step, and they just don't get it. And you know, yeah, until you actually see a working demo or something, it's not always obvious, isn't it? It works. There you go.

And you know, there's some great proof of working tools now where you can create these things without any code, you know, using like Sketch and Figma and Envision. Yeah. But then, you know, that's something that not every designer knows that, I'm not very good at interaction design, you know, animation, it's not my strength. But the time it takes me to learn how to do all that, I could probably knock it out a bit of code in half the time.

So for me, it's much more efficient to just write a look at CSS and JavaScript than it is to start creating all these animation keyframe animations in my design tool, because then I'm still gonna have to go and write the code right afterwards. So yeah, this is thinking overall on the end towards having both skills, not just because I do have both, but I would say anyone who's a designer now and is even interested in web design or is currently working on web design, definitely learn the basics. And see where it takes you, it might just become your core skill in the end. Yeah, definitely.

I think I probably go as far as saying anyone doing print design, anyone who's stuck in a box just designing logos and branding and leaflets and things, you know, the whole principle, the grid concept is there. So that can easily translate across the web design and then they can pick up the coding skills and encompass it all together, right? Yeah, true. Yeah.

Yeah. Then again, these designers who are just strictly working on logos, I think, may never want to go that way, but you know, that's not the option. So they're, you know, I'm afraid to try out. Yeah.

Another thing that opens up is the ability to create your own looks like projects as well. You know, just then I have to be complicated, but you've got all the skills in house, then why not do them? Yeah, definitely. I've just started experimenting with working with advanced custom fields and WordPress and implementing this code in templates using PHP and using WordPress functions, things that, you know, try not to mess around too much, but I've just found myself, you know, creating, you know, massive pieces of functionality for a website.

And now I'm thinking, okay, I can be right so much stuff that I've done before with this, you know, these functions that I now have that I've learned about, just by spending a little bit of time reading up on the WordPress codecs and things, things like that and looking at examples. Yeah. You know, now I can just start using this going forwards in other projects, but you know, a bit of learning that stuff that I was a little bit afraid of, but I thought, wait a minute, let's give it a go, let's see where we can go with it. You know, it's brilliant.

Yeah, I think it's definitely something that any sort of designer who's out there who's thinking about it. Just start getting into it. Maybe, you know, pick your, definitely start with your HTML, understand structure or HTML code, CSS, they're the main things. I don't know about you, but what do you think about, you know, people picking up SaaS straight away, or would you say, understand CSS, how it's, you know, what CSS is written and how that works, and then kind of go towards SaaS or less or would say, yeah, yeah, I'd always say start with the basics, start with right hand writing your HTML, don't rely on any sort of generators straight away, learn about CSS, all the different properties and their values.

Learn about vanilla JavaScript, some of the basics, you don't need to know too much, but you know, simple DOM manipulation, how to find elements on a page, how to add to them, or how to, you know, interact with them, and then you can pick up frameworks, say it wrong, because, you know, for a designer who needs to learn how to code, they don't need to learn SaaS, they need to learn about the main thing you need to learn is HTML structure, that's the most important thing. Once you've gotten that nailed and some basic styling, then you can start looking at, you know, the whole world of sort of web development will then open up to you if you want to, but yeah, most important thing is definitely HTML structure, because that's what's going to impact your design the most. Yeah, that's the fundamental of it, wasn't it? What about, what about coders who should design?

Should coders design? I would say yes, for all the same reasons, really, well, not for all the same reasons, but just to have that understanding again of, you know, what the other side of the table is doing, what are they working on, rather than also always having, you know, everything work done in silos. I find that a lot of the time, especially with backend developers, don't offend anyone, but they tend to not really care how things look. And very true.

Yeah. You know, they don't necessarily have to care, but it could just, especially like if you're trying, if you're a backend developer and your task is to get some data from a database and spit it out on the page, there's no reason why you can't add a little bit of structure to that. Oh, yeah. You know, if you're throwing an image onto a page with some text and, you know, some data that needs to be shown in a table, just put it in a table, maybe set a width and stuff like that on the image, or give it a rough structure.

Yeah. It just makes it a bit quicker for the front end developers then to pick that up and work with it based on the design. It's quite rare where design happens after a backend development. I don't think that happens very often.

They're not in any scenarios I've experienced anyway. So most of the time designers will have, most of the time developers will have a design to look at, to reference. It would be nice if they just picked up now, then and just learn some basics. Yeah.

But then, I don't know, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it's as important for developers to learn how to design. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not essential. The other thing is, one thing I believe you can't really teach, you know, art skills and design skills to, you know, but it's not something. No. Yeah.

It's something that you just, you've either got it or you haven't really. It just develops over time. You can learn techniques, but. Techniques.

I think the fundamentals though, like, you know, good spacing and structure we talked about, things like that, and you can get into typography and sizing and things like that. But there's so many resources online where you can look at this stuff and it'll give you, it'll give a developer an idea of, you know, how things should look. Yeah. One thing I would say is I would recommend for developers to learn how to use design tools, design applications, not necessarily do the designs themselves, but know their way around Photoshop, know how to extract elements from Photoshop, know how to find out what the font is, what the color is.

Yeah. And that way you don't always need to rely on someone else to give you assets. Yeah. If you can attract these things yourself, you can just get a head start on things.

So yeah, that's, that's an option. Maybe we can take this one away, think about it a bit more and come up with another episode. Definitely. I think this opens up loads of different avenues, I think.

Yeah. Maybe people can write in, if you've got an opinion on whether, if you're a designer who learns that code, let us know if you're a developer thinking, should I learn how to design? Let us know as well. Can write on site, expect FM on Twitter.

Yeah. Good stuff. Okay. I think that's pretty much covered it.

Yeah. I think so. Essentially, me and you both think that it's a good thing. Some people may think not, depending on the reason it's not true, but I think that overall there's more reasons to be a designer who can code, whether you do or not.

I could. At least have the ability. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Good stuff. All right. So learn some coding. Yeah, guys.

Yeah. Right. All right. All right.

On that note, you go on your recommendations this week. We thought of anything. Um, recommendations, recommendations. Oh, Mario Kart got released.

Have you been playing it? On I have. Yeah, but it kind of crashed and I wasn't able to get back into it. But first, my first goal, wasn't it?

It was brilliant. Yeah. I've had a couple of goals. It's just Nintendo.

They released these apps on the phones, right? So this is the third one that they released now. They did Mario run, Dr. Mario and now Mario Kart.

And every single one, it's just constant connectivity problems. Yeah. Like, put it together Nintendo. Yeah, Nintendo.

Yeah. But yeah, I had to go on that. And it was, I was really excited about it. And it was good.

Yeah. The amount of time about the spending. It was good. Yeah.

Yeah. That's one recommendation. Definitely. Yeah.

Okay. I've got one. I've got another YouTube channel this week. So it's a guy called Harry Mack.

And he's a freestyle rapper. All right. I think he's from New York. And basically what he does, he just walked around the streets and he bumped into people.

And he's just freestyling and he'll pick out things in the crowd. So he'll drop in what someone's wearing or someone's eating a sandwich or they've got a Starbucks cup in their hand or stuff like that. He'll just drop those into his lyrics. And the guy is crazy.

I'm telling you, he's got some of his videos. They're like 15, 20 minutes long. And he's just constantly freestyling for the whole thing. And I've just been sitting there with a massive grin on my face the whole way through.

It's just like in awe of this guy. So he's brilliant. Harry Mack. So he's literally free freestyling.

This guy's like ad hoc rapper. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if there's a specific term for that type of freestyling where they're just picking things out of the crowd.

Yeah. There's another video of him on the Ellen show where they got people in the audience to write these words out. And she's just holding up cards with these words one at a time. Yeah.

That one could be a little bit staged. But the one reason is walking down the street. Like he picks up the smallest details within seconds. Someone walks past him.

Right. And within, I would say one bar. He's dropped in something about that person. Well.

He's just really quick. I mean a lot of his stuff is a bit repetitive. So he says a lot of the similar things each time. So he's clearly got like some go-to words which write certain things.

But you know, either way, brilliant. Sounds good. I'll definitely check that one out. Yeah.

Harry Mack could check him out. It's really good to hear him out. Yeah. Cool.

All right. We good. Cool. Okay.

That's it for this week. Like I said, like I said, like I said, Ellen's saying thing. And say anything. All right.

So we said it. Okay. Cool. That's it for this week.

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Yeah. See you there.