Interview with Jacob Gube from Six Revisions

For our second designer interview I had the privilege of speaking with Jacob Gube, the man behind the very extremely popular design blog Six Revisions.   I hope you’ll enjoy hearing from Jacob, He has an expansive set of design and developments skills.   Besides being an amazing designer and running one of the top design blogs he is also an all around great guy, always taking time to answer emails and to help out whomever he can with his expertise…

1.  Thank you for taking the time for this interview, Could you please start off by telling us 7 things about yourself we may not know from your website

Hi Ben! Well, first, let me start by saying “thanks” for having me share my thoughts here on your awesome blog. Alright, seven things you may not know about me:

1. I love video games and I try to make time for playing them.
2. I don’t eat fruits unless they’re in liquid form (the texture bothers me).
3. My favorite beer is Newcastle Brown Ale.
4. I’m a proud Windows user, primarily because of #1 above and because I build my own PCs.
5. My favorite color combination is Black (#000000) and Red (#9e0b0f).
6. I don’t particularly like watching professional sports, it bores me, though I used to play a lot of sports when I was still it in school (soccer, basketball).
7. I drive a Nissan.

Interview - Six Revisions

2.  What is your design and development background and how does that play a role in the work you produce?

Professionally I started out as a graphic designer (freelance). Now that I’m more of a web developer, my background in design makes it easier to stand in as a designer, or to design a website/webapp that I’ll also write code for myself.

Interview - Six Revisions

February 2, 2008 was the first blog post I wrote. One of the things that really kickstarted the site is the success it has had in social news sites; particularly Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. So I guess one main decision I’ve made is to put that at the forefront of Six Revisions, by placing Digg, SU, and Delicious buttons at the top of each post.

Another thing that I think has helped greatly is my decision to venture outside of Six Revisions, and contribute to other weblogs such as Smashing Magazine, ReadWriteWeb, and Webdesigner Depot. My first guest post was a blog post exchange between me and Steven over at Vandelay Design; It was about Flash-based sites. Guest posting helped get my name out there and it also enabled me to connect with people like Steven and Vitaly (of Smashing Magazine).

Finally, opening up Six Revisions to contributing authors was the best decision I’ve made. When I was the only one writing for the site, I couldn’t maintain a regular schedule and it was difficult to keep the content variety high. It’s a pleasure to work with other writers and Six Revisions would not be what it is now without them; they’re as much a part of the site as I am.

Interview - Six Revisions

4.  How has your professional design and development work influenced Six Revisions and vice versa?

I’d say my professional work greatly influenced Six Revisions. The idea of doing Six Revisions actually stemmed from me needing to catalog all the things I learned while working on my projects. Most of the articles I write results from having done something on a project that I want to record and share with others.

Six Revisions has made me a better designer and developer because it forces me to stay ahead of the curve and continually learn about web design and web development, and to improve on what I know now.

Interview - Six Revisions

5.  What is the most exciting/interesting thing you currently are working or have worked on?

I can name a lot of interesting things I’ve worked on, and it wouldn’t be fair to narrow it down to one project. To me, I have a special place for Eclipse Window Tinting (http://www.justtintit.com/) because it was the first project where I did everything from graphic design (logo, print materials) all the way up to web development (MySQL database and PHP for the quoting feature). It was the project that indicated to me that you can be a jack-of-all-trades successfully if you really wanted to.

Interview - Six Revisions

6.  What/Who is your biggest influence in this field? Why?

Again, I can name a lot of people and things that fit into this category and I don’t think I’ve answered this question the same way regardless of how many times I’ve been asked in the past. Alright, who’s it going to be this time, let’s see… I’ll go with… Smashing Magazine. Why? I think they were really the first major weblog that managed to find success by focusing on comprehensiveness and quality of posts versus frequency of updates. I mean, even now, with only 1 post a day, they’re able to maintain a high Technorati ranking (which bases the rank by the number of other weblogs that link to an article of yours) versus other weblogs that update 10-20 times a day (the more posts you have, the more links you can get, the higher the chance you have of getting more authority versus another weblog that doesn’t update frequently).

Interview - Six Revisions

I’ll go with Adobe Dreamweaver because it’s the IDE I use. I can live without it, but having it certainly makes the job easier. I can name 10 more tools, but that’s the one I use on a daily basis that I would say is critical to my productivity.

Interview - Six Revisions

8.  I read somewhere that you named your blog Six Revisions because “you’d perform several revision rounds based on the client’s feedback” – In your experience, how do you see the client/designer relationship in regards to the final say and direction of a project? Has this changed over your career or remained constant?

My stance is this: I’ll try to convince you/argue with you/show you evidence until I’m blue in the face that what I’ve created for you is what I think the best way to do it is — but at the end of the day, considering that you’re the one giving me money to do a job and that it’s your business at stake, you’ll have the final say. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you and don’t expect your project to go into my portfolio. Of course, I say all of this in a cordial manner, but in essence, that’s my view and that’s always how I’ve done it.

Interview - Six Revisions

1. Write on other blogs (bonus tip: contact me about writing for Six Revisions)
2. Maintain a regular schedule, whether it’s one post a month or five posts a day.
3. Don’t give up so easily.
4. Cover a topic that you’re passionate about.
5. Get to know the people in your niche.

Interview - Six Revisions

Next 6 months: new site design (which I’ve said was my plan a year ago and still hasn’t happened) and just more quality content for readers to enjoy. Next 5 years… who knows.

Interview - Six Revisions

I want to thank Jacob very much for his time, I hope you liked this interview and found it as valuable as I did.  Make sure you stop by SixRevisions and follow Jacob on Twitter!