Interview with Jacob Gube From Six Revisions

Today we have a special guest in our Interview seat and its Jacob Gube from Six Revisions and Design Instruct. Jacob has been a inspiration to thousands of people around the world through his blog Six Revisions and continue to impress with new content. We here at Creativeoverflow asked Jacob some questions and this is what he had to say to us.

Interviewed: Jacob Gube

Occupation: Blogger and Designer

Sites: Six Revisions – Design Instruct

Twitter: @Sixrevisions

1. Welcome to Creativeoverflow, please introduce yourself. Could you tell us where you’re from and how you got started in the Blogging Industry?

Hello, my name is Jacob Gube (pronounced “Goobeh“). I’m a web developer and web designer based in the U.S. I run the website called Six Revisions, which provides useful information for web designers and web developers. I’m also the Co-Founder of Design Instruct, a design tutorial web magazine for designers and digital artists that provides high quality and comprehensive tutorials. I’m also a book author and my first book was just recently published by the awesome people at Packt Publishing. It’s called MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide.

I got started in 2008 with Six Revisions. It started out as a way for me to keep track of all the things I learned while building sites. Through time, it’s evolved into a multi-author site with articles written by designers and developers from around the world.

Design Instruct (http://designinstruct.com) is my newest web project. It was born out of an idea my brother and I had about creating a web magazine that features high quality tutorials for designers and digital artists to foster our own passions toward design. He’s an extremely talented artist (he’s the creative one in the family), so I know that this project will have an amazing direction. Design Instruct was launched close to the 2nd year anniversary of Six Revisions.

2. You run “Six Revisions” a very successful design blog that has found a place amongst the top design blogs in the world, was that your goal when you started out?

When I started Six Revisions, I had no clear plan or goal. My only driving factor was to share what I loved and knew best, which was building websites. The growth of the site is truly unexpected and I would’ve never imagined that I’d be in the situation I am now.

3. What is a typical day in the life of Jacob Gube like?

I’m a morning person, so I work best in the morning’s. I wake up anywhere between 5:00AM and 6:30AM. The first thing I do is brew a pot of coffee. The process and the smell of the coffee brewing wakes me up. I’ll check emails for a few minutes, process my task list, and plan my day. I’ll work until between 5:00PM and 7:00PM depending on how much I have to do that day.

4. What is your favorite thing to do in any given work day?

I’ll  have to say that the favorite thing in my work day is my freshly-brewed cup of coffee in the morning. Coffee is one of my guilty pleasures.

5. Name two people that have been your source of inspiration towards building and maintaining Six Revisions?

The first is my dad. He works hard and doesn’t seem to mind it. I think in order to be good at what you do, you have to have passion for it.

The second person is Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine. Smashing Magazine has always been a great source of inspiration for Six Revisions, and I love working with them and writing for them.

6. How much different would your life be if you didn’t have Six Revisions? What would you be doing?

If I didn’t have Six Revisions, I’d have another site! I truly do love building websites and sharing the cool things that I learn to others like me.

7. Having a lot of things to do as a blogger we can sometimes surprise ourselves with how our workstations look, is your workstation neat or do you have to dig around to find some things sometimes?

My workstation is ultra neat because I’m a big fan of minimalism. So there’s very little clutter and mess. Since most of my work is done in the computer, I don’t have much paper to keep around and dig through; I pretty much run a paperless operation. I’ve posted photos of my workspace on Flickr, if you’re interested in seeing the workstation that runs Six Revisions and Design Instruct, here it is:

8. What are the tools you couldn’t live without?

I can’t live without my PC’s, quite obviously. I use two computers regularly: a custom-built Windows machine and a Dell XPS laptop. I can’t live without my Moleskine, which is my task list keeper, planner, idea catcher, wallet, coupon holder, and a place to stick random things into. It’s where I develop a majority of my ideas. You can see a photo of it on Flickr. The photo below shows some notes I took while writing my “Call to Action Buttons” article for Smashing Magazine:

9. Anything else you would like to share with the readers of Creativeoverflow?

Always carry around something that you can take notes on. You never know when an idea will strike or when your creativity decides to kick in. Inspiration can come from odd places and situations and when you’re in that moment, it would be a tragedy if you couldn’t capture it somehow.

Once again Thank you for taking your time to answer our questions.