Jesse Thomas

Jesse Thomas, a New Zealand-American graphic designer, is the founder and chief executive officer of JESS3, a creative agency specializing in data visualization and Social media marketing which he co-founded in 2007 with Leslie Bradshaw.

Thomas's family emigrated to the United States from New Zealand in the early 1980s, and he was brought up in Arlington, Virginia. His parents worked for the New Zealand and Australian embassies in Washington, D.C. He developed an early interest in graphic design while experimenting with MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop with his friends. While in high school he created his own website, where he published his own photographs, images and videos. He also used the site to display his design skills by creating collages, with custom titles and typography to accompany entries on the website.

Thomas attended Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., where he studied digital media design, but left before earning his degree to join a start-up company. In 2005, he took on an early freelance client, Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., after pitching his design ideas to the owner. In addition to helping name the restaurant, Thomas designed its logo and signage, built its website and became the restaurant's creative director. Other early freelance and independent design work included artwork for graphic design and art shows, and skateboard designs.

Thomas' first agency role was at Qorvis Communications. While at Qorvis, he made industry contacts that led to his next role as art director at Ogilvy & Mather in the 360 Digital Influence team. In May 2007, Thomas left Ogilvy to work at AOL,creating new products in its Experience Prototype Lab team.He left AOL in December 2007 and, while on a lecture tour of Asia with AIGA, hired two full time employees to assist him in starting his own company.

Following his departure from AOL,Thomas founded JESS3 in late 2007 with its current President and COO, Leslie Bradshaw. The company's name, which Thomas devised while still a student, was inspired by Eminem's use of the numeral "3" as the "e" in his name on album artwork. The firm was conceived as a creative agency, specializing in social media and branding, based around Thomas's web design skills. subsequently, JESS3 branched out into more general user experience work, and particularly focused on data visualization projects, later including Google, Nike, Intel, Microsoft and NASA. As of 2011, the company employs around 27 individuals full-time, 40 part-time, and works with approximately 300 freelance artists.

For his work with JESS3, Thomas was named a 2011 Tech Titan by the Washingtonian and was featured in Washington Life's 2012 "The Young and the Guest List" list of opinion makers under 40.

Noteworthy projects that JESS3 has undertaken with Thomas's leadership includes the NASA website "Buzzroom" that tracks NASA-related tweets, videos and images, the C-SPAN Video Library, which was awarded a Peabody Award in March 2011, and the design of "The Conversation Prism", an infographic poster produced in partnership with Brian Solis. In 2010, he was approached by Facebook to develop the Facebook Stories application. Thomas has stated that this application is one of the JESS3 projects that he is "most proud of".

In 2011, in collaboration with Forbes, he conceived and produced a graphic novel based on Steve Jobs' life following his resignation from Apple in the 1980s. The Zen of Steve Jobs, illustrated by JESS3 and published by Forbes, was released in November 2011.