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Alumni Awards List

BRIAN JONES grew up 120 miles south of K-State in Augusta, Kansas, a town of about 8,500 people. He can't remember the exact moment that he wanted to be an architect, but he knows that by age 10, he was designing and building houses out of LEGOS. Brian's high school drafting classes led him to apply to K-State's College of Architecture, Planning and Design. It was at K-State that Brian developed his understanding of architecture as an art form. More than a set of techniques, architecture was a means to explore the relationships between buildings and people.

As a second-year student, Brian worked as a volunteer for Oz, the college's journal. A class project creating promotional materials for a hypothetical showing of an architect's work sparked Brian's interest in graphic design.

In his third year, Brian began doing graphic design work for the college, including designing posters for events and lectures and designing the college's first website. Working with the college faculty as a vendor instead of as a student proved to be a valuable training ground for Brian's future business. During the second semester of his third year, Brian was invited to join the college's lectures and exhibits committee. He worked to bring multiple speakers to the college, including Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Neil Denari and author Paul Shepheard. That summer, Brian briefly returned to Augusta to intern for architecture firm William Morris Associates.

Brian became a junior editor of Oz in his fourth year. The second semester of his fourth year found Brian in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy, as part of the college's study abroad program, The architecture, the food and the way of life prompted Brian to declare Italy his favorite place in the world, and he goes back on vacation whenever he can. While in Rome, Brian saw the Pantheon for the first time, and its powerful simplicity became a major influence on his future work.

In his fifth year, Brian continued both his involvement in the lectures and exhibits committee and his graphic design work for the college. Along with Michael Fasulo '97, Brian was named co-editor of Oz.

Brian received several awards during his time at K-State, including the American Institute of Architects Kansas Award for Student Excellence for his project, "Brewery;" a scholarship for fifth-year architecture students; and a Heintzelman Prize honorary mention for his thesis project, "Church," which was featured in the Chang Gallery.

When Brian started at K-State, he assumed he would become a practicing architect. After graduation, he planned to move to Chicago and work in an architecture firm. An impromptu trip to New York with a friend changed his plans. Riding the escalator up from Penn Station to the corner of Seventh Avenue and 34th Street, Brian knew instantly that he wanted to move to New York. He sent out resumes to New York firms and within a few weeks had secured a job with BBG-BBGM. Brian's projects at BBG-BBGM included a luxury hotel in mid-town Manhattan, a casino in Connecticut, and proposals for projects in Egypt and China.

The work at BBG-BBGM was challenging and interesting, but Brian felt there was something missing. He left the firm in 1998 to work for Olhausen DuBois, where his projects included a major art gallery, a graduate school computer center and residential properties. Brian realized that he had lost interest in the process of getting buildings built but was still passionate about how people's lives could be impacted by good design.

Brian decided to pursue his design interests on his own terms, and in 1999 he founded Graphicmachine, Inc. He developed some side web design work he had previously done for BBG-BBGM into his first commission. That served as a spring board for a project designing the interface for a software development company in New York. In the spring of 1999, Oz published Brian's article, "Perpetual Motion," and this led to more commissions, including projects for K-State alumni.

Today, Brian has grown Graphicmachine into a multi-faceted design and consulting company. When pressed for a job title, Brian will say that he's a designer (omitting the prefix "graphic" on the grounds that it's too limiting). His award-winning work includes web, print and video designs, as well as marketing and start-up advice to businesses of all sizes. His clients include architecture firms, artists, an international photography foundation and restaurants.

By forging his own path, Brian has been able to pursue the parts of architecture that he loves most: being able to translate an idea into a form, being able to rationally determine how things go together, and being conscious of providing people with the best design possible. Brian credits K-State with showing him the world in an entirely new way and giving him the opportunity to work with superior faculty and students to make his own mark on the world.