Native Texan Ben Jenkins founded OneFastBuffalo in 1998 after completing his MFA in Art & Technology at
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied new media arts, design, film, and current social issues of the American Indian. While attending SAIC he spent time making his thesis film on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. This period of time really screwed up his trust of conventional wisdom and here we are.
Ben studied graphic design and architecture as an undergraduate at
Mississippi State University while playing baseball for the Southeastern Conference school. After college, Ben spent time as a Minor League baseball player for the
Philadelphia Phillies. This is where he started doing freelance design projects to pass the time while sitting in motels and riding in buses. "I love playing ball but I don't like watching soap operas, over sleeping, eating at 711, and playing poker 24/7. I did like the long bus rides from town-to-town though. I had long stretches of time to think on things, sketch ideas, and read books. I also saw lots of interesting terrain. Mostly, I got used to never standing still."
Ben has a passion for solving complex communication problems with design, strategy, and technology. Ben has 15 years experience working with organizations large and small (All kinds of brands - some you've heard of, and others you haven't.) Ben received no previous agency experience before starting OFB. "Making things is what I like to do. Simple as that. I'm not cut out for much else from an employment standpoint. I'd just sit there and re-arrange everything in the place." His digital films and experimental video work have been screened in international film and video festivals. He likes to think he would have won lots of awards in Print magazine and stuff like that but never saw the point in paying money to have your work shown to all the other designers. "I figure if my clients are happy, and I dig the work, I did a good job."
Recently, Ben was selected as the 2009 MSU College of Architecture, Art & Design
Alumnus of the Year.
Ben is married to a kick-arse gal named Jenn who (Jenn said I should say "whom" here but I just can't do it) he met when he was 12. They have 3 sons, Shane, Shepard and Shaw.
OneFastBuffalo is a full time endeavor for Ben, but he also serves as teacher and instructor at local universities and serves a volunteer trainer for NVision, providing creative mentorship to Native American youth. Ben has also started other successful brands of his own including:
Warstic Bat Co,
Treadsmith Board Co,
Workhaus Lodge, and
INDIG. He enjoys collecting boots, playing guitars and banjo, camping, surfing/sking/snowboarding, cooking, drawing & painting, leather-working, and playing for the
Dallas Buffaloes Baseball Club, a wood-bat team in a league for ex-college and professional players. He coaches the
OFB Buffaloes Little League team and enjoys
Airstream trips with his family...draggin them pretty much all around the northern hemisphere looking for cool junk and hittin every pawn shop from here to Barstow.