I stumbled upon the work of illustrator/graphic artist/type nerd Jesse Hora through the website of Lifelounge’s “Some Type of Wonderful” type design show and was immediately blown away. Having a healthy reverence for designers who become obsessed with type work, I try to check in on this sub-species of graphic artist every once in a while, and most of the time I find the landscape littered with the serifs of folks who have given themselves over to creating great type designs. Not Jesse Hora. This Chicagoan (by way of Michigan) is a jack of all trades, excelling at illustration, overall design and, or course, great type work. I checked in with Jesse recently to chat about his work and, low and behold, he agreed to come on as EL*STOP’s first guest curator. What does that mean? Well, we’re still figuring that out, but it will mainly involve letting Jesse commandeer the site for the next few days to spotlight Chicago creatives who make this town the vibrant home of a thriving design community. But first, Chicago, I give you, Jesse Hora Dot Com (always with the dot com, how po-mo), after the jump.

EL*STOP: Tell me about yourself briefly. How did you get into design?

Jesse Hora Dot Com: My name is Jesse Hora Dot Com. I am a chubby, white, freckle-faced freelance graphic artist, illustrator/designer/art director, originally from the great mitten state (Michigan, just in case). I got into ‘design’ at a very early age by obsessing over basketball cards and looking at old classic cars. Once I realized that I could make a living out of thinking for a living I was all in.

LS: Was there an ah-ha moment that you realized that things like basketball cards or print ads or other design elements were actually made by someone?

JHDC: Well, my whole family, my whole time growing up I was surrounded by visual things, like my dad paints cars for a living, he does show cars with immaculate paint jobs and basically everyone in my family does something in realm of visual art, so I guess it was just kind of always part of my art.

SC: I think a lot of people see interesting visuals, and have an aptitude to create, but never make the connection that you can make an actual living making those things, whether they be painting cars or creating print advertising, do you think your dad painting cars gave you some inspiration to go out and make a go of it?

JHDC: Maybe subconsciously, but there was an ah-ha moment in college. I did an internship at a design studio called Mode Project and, like most internships, I got no money, not even a livable wage really, but at the end of that they needed me to stay on for an illustration project that fit perfectly with what I had studied and what I was good at, and this creative director took me under his wing and told me ‘hey you’re good at this, you could make some money [as a graphic designer]’ and so I got a real taste of that while I was still in I school. I had a whole year left of school and I made more in two weeks of drawing than I had all summer. So that was really a point where I thought, ‘I can probably do this.’

SC: It seems some folks in the graphic design and commercial art world fall into a niche where they focus on illustration, or design, or type design, they really seem to compartmentalize their work, and you seem to have bucked that trend and to have had some successes in a variety of design niches.

JDHC: I feel it’s really important to not get stuck in that niche and that people get stuck in those niches because it’s easy, because they can keep doing the same thing and make a name for themselves doing this one thing and, not to talk down to anyone, but I think some people get lazy and don’t want to try any new things because they get known for this one style. And that’s really a traditional illustration mindset where people will start to think, ‘I need to develop my own style.’ I just signed with an illustration rep and she was really adamant about people not trying to do too may different things with their style, but I’m one of the only people in the group who have type, design, and illustration in their portfolio and I feel comfortable showing it to anybody even just for illustration projects. Basically, my mindset on it is that I want to try to keep pushing myself to be interested in design, illustration, art, whatever you want to call it, to try something new every day so I don’t get bored with it.

LS: Tell me about the Illustration Corporation and how you got involved with it.

JHDC: Basically, I wasn’t in on it on the ground floor, there was a group of six people who were involved in some way with Ogilvy and Mather who put it together. And there’s a nice range of people, there’s an older, more established guy there down to an intern, and they got together with the idea that, ‘Hey among the designers at Ogilvy, we have some pretty talented illustrators here, we should get together and form this group to represent these illustrators.’ Eric Ellis was the intern there, and I interned with him at Mode, and he showed it to me and it sort of just worked out from there.

LS: If illustration corporation were a basketball team…

JHDC: [Laughs] I like where this is going…

SC: Would you be a low post man muscling in from the baseline or would you be more of a shooting guard?

JHDC: I guess I’m husky enough to play the low post.

SC: You’re not afraid to use those elbows?

JHDC: Not at all, I mean no blood, no foul…umm, what?

SC: Have you seen anything since you moved to Chicago from Michigan, either street art wise or in local print ads or on billboards that has inspired your design sensibilities?

JHDC: There’s on specific project that pops up for me. In there area where I live [Bucktown], there are a lot of Latin American grocery stores and bodegas, and the hand-drawn type on a lot of those places is just insane. I actually took the time to make a typeface based off those hand-drawn signs. In this area especially, being on the edge of some gentrification, there are a lot of Polish, Eastern European, and Latin American places that have these great hand-drawn signs.

SC: Last question. Is there anything better than a rooftop party in June?

JHDC: Absolutely not.

Read More: Chicago, Eric Ellis, Graphic Design, Illustration, Ilustration Corporation, Jesse Hora, Lifelounge, Mode Project, Ogilvy and Mather, Some Type of Wonderful, Type