Jacob Cooper
Interview by Mary Duke
Mary: How did you get into this line of work?
Jacob: There was a really big blog craze in the late 90’s for some reason when I was in middle school. Everyone had one and everyone wanted theirs to look cool. So I sort of taught myself how to code and do dumb shit to my homepage or livejournal. I would also work on my friends’ blog designs and just basically taught myself as I went.
Mary: Describe a typical day on the job for you.
Jacob: It varies. Sometimes I’ll be on the road and work in the van or hotel. Sometimes I’ll be really hungover. Sometimes I’ll be home and work in my underwear all day. Sometimes I have to get up early and work from clients’ offices or houses. At this rate I probably spend a couple hours a day maintaining a lot of work for clients and projects.
Mary: What types of clients have you built websites for? Are there any experiences that stand out as being most memorable, challenging, rewarding, etc.?
Jacob: I’d like to think every website or project I work on allows me to learn more about easier ways of developing sites. Coding and Internet technology changes constantly. My clients range anywhere from major labels to authors to actors. I want to be able to turn work around as fast as possible.
Right now I’m working with the city of LA and UCLA to develop a site for climate change reports on Los Angeles county and neighboring communities. This is actually pretty interesting to me because I get to go to meetings and talk to scientists and other people that are doing pretty awesome things. It’s more involved than most projects.
Mary: What do you love most about being a web designer?
Jacob: Making my own hours and being my own boss. I can also make shit look like gold. That’s the best part of web design. You can be in the worst sounding band or have a bad idea but you can have an amazing website or branding. Web design to me is so unbiased because of that.
Mary: Do you remember the first website you built for a client? What was it?
Jacob: I’m pretty sure one of the first non-personal things I did was for my middle school. Not actually a real job but it was fun. My 7th grade teacher shot herself in the arm one morning and blamed it on someone that wasn’t there. I got really excited to update the front page that day.
That summer I got a job doing a site for my district’s school bus department. I got to hang out with a lot of bus drivers and listen to them bitch about kids and gossip in the coffee room. We became friends.
Mary: Where do you find creative inspiration? For example, is there a designer that you admire or are there design sites that you follow religiously?
Jacob: I’m on tumblr and fffffound.com. Both sites are just posts of images people find all over the web. It’s definitely influenced my work. I’m not much of a coding bluff or anything. I think that stuff is pretty nerdy. I rarely talk to other designers or developers about this stuff for fear of having to dork out. Talking about web coding with someone is like watching King Of The Hill with your friends to me.
Mary: What advice would you give to someone hoping to pursue a career in web design?
Jacob: Copy other sites and ripoff their ideas. Learn how they do certain things by looking at their coding. Try to stay away from message boards unless you feel like getting tech raped by dudes who live in their mom’s basement and get mad if you don’t word your questions the right way. Seriously it’s how I learned and how I still learn. I google everything. Everything I have learned in the last 10 years of life has been googled. Yesterday I googled “national dog day” I don’t know why.
Mary: What, in your opinion, is a design choice/approach NO web designer should ever make when building a site?
Jacob: Don’t ever argue with the client unless you really think something will save time or help them. Be thorough with whatever information on design and functions you need. And get a deposit before doing anything!
Mary: Anything else you’d like to share.
Jacob: Jessica alba is very nice.
