Jesper Myrfors was Wizards of Coast's original Art Director.
During his time at Wizards he directed art for role playing games and books that the original company was famous for before the development of Magic: the Gathering.
When development on Magic: the Gathering began, Jesper had the time of his life soliciting people to do art for the game. According to what he said in his various interviews and from interviews done with Mark Tedin and members of the original 25 artists, barely any of the established names within the Role Playing Game and publishing sector didn't want to be part of contributing work for it. So art students, and not so famous names like Rob Alexander would find a way to breakout into the industry in ways least expected when TSR was still the juggernaut in the room.
As development got underway, he and Christopher Rush would both go onto designing the back of the card and various other assets for the game that either have made it into the final product or were never published. His last known set he worked on is Unglued.
His significant contributions to the game are Tundra, Bayou, Scrubland and Tropical Island for the original Base Set in addition to Demonic Hordes, Word of Command, and the first three Plains for the game.
Before graduating from art school, he used to work for book stores for which at several points he crossed paths with Microsoft Founder Bill Gates. Whether he had conversations with him is not known.
After leaving Wizards behind for personal reasons, he and Peter Adkinson went onto found Hidden City Entertainment where they worked on Bella Sara and Clout Fantasy. During his time there, he meet his future wife Julie Snoops and married her sometime later.
When Hidden City Games folded up in 2011, he and long time friend Brian Snoddy went to go develop independent games on their own. The first being the infamous card game "Dead Fella's" and a series of others that have yet to be released.
From 1998 through 2010, Jesper Myrfors fell from the face of the earth. But in 2010, long time collectibles dealer Daniel Chang brought him back onto the map through a series of interviews. From 2010 until 2016, those videos were active on Chang's YouTube Channels, but have since been taken down for reasons not explained.
From 2008 through 2014, Jesper had some criticisms of Hasbro. On his Facebook, he would occasionally hint why he left Wizards of the Coast, how Hasbro has been managing the company and other stuff in-between.
In late-2015, Jesper returned to the Magic scene after a lengthy hiatus. His first events were in Europe where he and Mark Tedin were guests of honor for some Eternal events. He would make his first Grand Prix appearance at Grand Prix Seattle-Tacoma with various artists throughout the game's two decades. Many long time players to some who were not around during the game's original release were surprised to see him show up, and do his thing. His 2nd appearance would be a few months later at Grand Prix Oakland 2016, where Jesper was looking forward to catching up on drinks with Christopher Rush for the rest of the year before Rush died a month later of a heart attack.
Jesper still lives in the Seattle area with Julie and has a daughter and 2 step daughters from Julie's previous marriage.
(Photo: Brandon Larkin collection)