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Saki Mafundikwa
Saki Mafundikwa is designer, typographer and director of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) in Harare. Saki is the author of Afrikan Alphabets, a comprehensive review of African writing systems. He has participated in exhibitions and workshops around the world, contributed to a variety of publications and lectured about the globalization of design and the African aesthetic. Saki received his MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University and has taught at The Cooper Union among other schools.



Keynote: Using Culture as Inspiration

Saki Mafundikwa is a speaker and a graphic designer who created the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts. Mafundikwa is the author of the book 'Afrikan Alphabets.' In 1997 he left his job in New York City to open the 'ZIVA' school.

After leaving home and arriving in America, Saki realized he wanted to be a graphic designer, which was not a profession that he had been aware of in Africa. While he believes that one might have to leave home to find out who they are, he also believes that it's important for people to know about their cultural heritage.

Mafundikwa encourages African graphic design students to look to their history and culture for inspiration. https://www.keynotes.org/speaker/SakiMafundikwa

Film:

Shungu: The Resilience of a People

https://www.e-flux.com/video/407003/shungu-the-resilience-of-a-people/

Eye Magazine

Face to face with the Afrikan written tradition

‘The stereotype is that Afrikans have no written tradition,’ writes Mafundikwa, a Zimbabwean graphic designer, Yale design school graduate and founder of Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA). ‘The truth is that Afrikans have known writing since the very early history of humanity.’

https://www.eyemagazine.com/review/article/face-to-face-with-the-afrikan-written-tradition

CommArts

Looking Within

Graphic designer and instructor Saki Mafundikwa encourages designers to embrace their roots to create their own styles.

https://www.commarts.com/columns/mafundikwa

The Good Page

Design-It-Yourself & Uncolonized Minds

https://thegoodpage.net/2015/01/07/design-it-yourself/

Huffpost

Visionary on a Mission - Introducing Saki Mafundikwa

https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/visionary-on-a-mission-in_b_5603755

KenArt (interior decorator)

In Conversation with Saki Mafundikwa

http://www.ken-art.com/blog/post/206/in-conversation-with-saki-mafundikwa

OCAD University
"Saki Mafundikwa has been a graphic designer, author, and educator for over 30 years.  Saki is a globally recognized expert on African writing systems and has given lectures, exhibits and workshops all over the world.  He also started Zimbabwe’s first graphic design and new media college, the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) in 1999.  His book on African writing systems, “Afrikan Alphabets”, 2004 is currently being considered for a second edition by Cassava Republic Press, London.

Mr. Mafundikwa, has a MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University and upon graduation worked as an Art Director in New York City. He also taught at Cooper Union, New York, and while he was at Cooper Union, he created the course, “Writing Systems from Non-Western Societies”, which later became, “Experimental Typography”. He also makes documentaries and his first one, “Shungu” won the Ousmane Sembene Prize at Zanzibar International Film Festival and Best Documentary at Kenya International Film Festival, both in 2010.

Nowadays, Mr. Mafundikwa teaches design and film at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle."

From OCAD bio:

"I have been a graphic designer, author, and educator for over thirty years. As a globally recognized expert on African writing systems, I have lectured, exhibited, and given workshops all over the world, including:

Lecture Art Center, Pasadena, CA, 2017

Speaker Annual Art History Lecture, Ringling College, Sarasota, FL, 2017

Type design workshop (with Rod Cavazos) WWU, Bellingham, WA, 2016

Speaker ICO-D International Design Congress, Gwangju, S. Korea, 2015

Keynote speaker Autodesk University (Education), Las Vegas, 2014

Speaker TED2013, Long Beach, 2013

Poster design & speaker Rio+20, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2012

Type design workshop ICOGRADA Multiverso Conference, Turin, 2008

Speaker, Tasmeem Design Conference, Doha, Qatar, 2006

Speaker Congreso deTipografia, Valencia, Spain, 2006

Speaker, Typo Berlin, 2005

Speaker ISEA 2004, Helsinki, Finland, 2004

Kinetic type design workshop Intuit Lab, Paris, 2002

UNESCO Workshop in Graphic Design and Textiles, Uganda,1999

Speaker, ICOGRADA Johannesburg, 2001

Graphic Artists from Around the World, Echirolles, France, 2000

Speaker Univesdidad ISESI, Cali, Colombia, 2000

Speaker London College of Printing, 1996

In addition to starting Zimbabwe’s first graphic design and new media college,

I wrote and published a comprehensive review of African writing systems (Afrikan Alphabets, 2004) that is currently being considered for an updated second edition by Cassava Republic Press, London.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, I left my home country in the 1970s at the height of its civil war and arrived in the United States in January 1980. After graduating from Indiana University in 1983 with a B.A. in both Graphic Design and Telecommunications, I was accepted into the M.F.A. program in Graphic Design at Yale University, where I was taught by Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson, Armin Hoffman and Alvin Eisenman. Upon completing my Master’s degree, I moved to New York City where I worked as an Art Director, and ran my own design studio. Some of my clients included Random House, St. Martin’s Press, Warner Brothers and Island Records.

While in New York, I taught design at Cooper Union for three years, creating a course, “Writing Systems from Non-Western Societies,” inspired by my MFA thesis on writing systems in Africa – this was the birth of my Afrikan Alphabets book. I had realized during the research for my thesis that there was no group of people anywhere on the planet who did not devise some form of writing or record keeping, yet relatively few of these are covered in contemporary graphic design courses. The Cooper Union course was wildly popular, sitting very well with their diverse student body. In the final year of my work there, the course morphed into “Experimental Typography,” which is still being offered at Cooper Union today.

After 12 years of working in New York, I returned to my country, now the independent state of Zimbabwe, and opened the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) in 1999. Though I intended for the school to be an African Bauhaus, that dream was railroaded by politics as prospective funders balked at Robert Mugabe’s autocratic rule of Zimbabwe. The school is still running today, though hanging on by a thread as the Zimbabwean economy has failed yet again. Despite these challenges many of my students have found career success, hired by prominent South African design firms and other corporations. The recent military coup and removal of Mugabe gives us hope that prosperity will return to my beautiful homeland and give a lifeline to ZIVA.

In the past decade I have turned some of my attention to documentary filmmaking. My first film, Shungu: The Resilience of a People (2009) has won awards notably, The Ousmane Sembene Prize at Zanzibar International Film Festival and Best Documentary at Kenya International Film Festival. It has screened all over the world – where it has been received very well by both critics and audiences – except in my own country, where it was banned. The film follows the brutal Zimbabwean presidential election of 2008, during the campaigns of Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition party. The film explores the everyday survival practices undertaken by the Zimbabwean people as they cope with political and economic strife.

I was forced to leave Zimbabwe beginning of last year due to the country’s most recent economic collapse, and I am currently teaching design and film at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. This was mainly due to the recommendation of my very good friend and fellow typographer John Berry who suggested my name to the folks who put together the Design Lecture Series at the Seattle Public Library end of January. Though Seattle has offered me a measure of economic asylum for the time being, my ultimate goal is to move back home where due to a benign coup late last year, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel both politically and economically. I also hope that because of the international community’s

re-engagement with Zimbabwe, ZIVA has a better chance of attracting funding and affiliation with international design schools.?

https://www2.ocadu.ca/event/educator-author-graphic-designer-saki-mafundikwa-will-be-guest-lecturing-at-ocad-u

Book:
Saki Mafundikwa, "Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika" Mark Batty Publisher; First Edition (October 1, 2006)


 * ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0972424067, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0972424066

Letterform Archive, Saki Mafundikwa A Typophile’s Twenty Year Adventures in Zimbabwe, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvT36zFT-ZA

TED Talk, Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets, From simple alphabets to secret symbolic languages, graphic designer Saki Mafundikwa celebrates the many forms of written communication across the continent of Africa. He highlights the history and legacy that are embodied in written words and symbols, and urges African designers to draw on these graphic forms for fresh inspiration. It's summed up in his favorite Ghanaian glyph, Sankofa, which means "return and get it" -- or "learn from the past."

Saki Mafundikwa wrote the book on Africa’s graphic design heritage — then opened a school of graphic arts in his native Zimbabwe. In his book Afrikan Alphabets, Saki Mafundiwaka includes a Ghanaian pictograph meaning “return to the past” This is exactly what he did in 1997 when he cashed in his publishing job 401(k) and left New York to open the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) in Harare. (“Vigital” denotes visual arts taught using digital tools.)

As a kid growing up in Zimbabwe, Mafundiwaka loved to sketch letterforms he saw in books and magazines, but he didn’t know graphic design was a career option until he arrived in America. "Sometimes you have to leave home,” he says, “to discover yourself.” He opened ZIVA to pay it forward. “The dream,” he says, “is for something to come out of Africa that is of Africa."

In 2010, he made the film Shungu: The Resilience of a People, a compelling narrative of the strategies ordinary people use to survive in Zimbabwe today.

https://www.ted.com/talks/saki_mafundikwa_ingenuity_and_elegance_in_ancient_african_alphabets?language=en

https://ideas.ted.com/saki-mafundikwa-what-i-cant-live-without/

Posted by: Bankole Oluwafemi September 27, 2017 at 7:36 pm EDT. "Saki Mafundikwa, a graphic designer, filmmaker, design teacher and founder of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (and a TED speaker himself) was commissioned to create an aesthetic for the theatre stage that was as elegant as it was culturally and thematically relevant. Most people who watch the talks online will see Mafundikwa’s abstract fabric designs on fabric drapes over the stage. But it might be that only those who were actually there in the theater will be able to truly appreciate the true stars of the show: giant symbols, beamed down on the floor and sides of the 600-seater with gobos. “TED loved the idea of gobos,” Mafundikwa says. “It’s one of those rare but beautiful moments when, as a designer, you have an idea and the client loves it!”

The symbols are not Klingon (obviously). They are alphabets from ancient African writing systems, of which Mafundikwa is a globally recognized expert.

“Some of the symbols are proverbs, like the Adinkra of the Akan people of Ghana. Those were easier to find in keeping with the theme. But others, like Ethiopic, which are syllabaries — each character stands for a syllable — were not so easy.”

Not all parts of Africa produced writing systems, Mafundikwa says, so finding a gamut of symbols that were truly representative proved to be a challenge. Nonetheless, he was ultimately able to present symbols that spanned all four hemispheres of the continent.

“In the end, there were two sets of designs: the symbols projected on the auditorium walls and floor and the stage backdrop. Initially, I just went crazy and produced a bunch of ideas and there was quite some back-and-forth until we settled on what you saw in Arusha.”"

https://blog.ted.com/symbolic-logic-how-african-alphabets-got-to-the-tedglobal-stage/

Indigo, Indigenous Design Network Saki Mafundikwa (Zimbabwe) is founder and director of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) a design and new media training college in Harare. Educated in the United States at Indiana University and Yale University, Saki returned home in 1998 to found ZIVA after working in New York City as a graphic designer, art director and design instructor. His book, Afrikan Alphabets: the Story of Writing in Africa was published in 2004. It is the first book on Afrikan typography. Saki”s first film, Shungu: The Resilience of a People a feature-length documentary had its world premiere at 2009’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). It won the prestigious Ousmane Sembene Award at Zanzibar International Film Festival and Best Documentary at Kenya International Film Festival both in 2010 and has screened at some of the top film festivals in the world. He was a speaker at TED2013 in Long Beach, California. Saki has been published widely on design and cultural issues. He lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe. https://www.indigo-indigenousdesignnetwork.org.au/saki-mafundikwa/

CCA event: SAKI MAFUNDIKWA: HOW I MADE MY WAY BACK HOME

Saki Mafundikwa is the founder and director of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA); a design and new media training college in Harare. He has an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University. He returned home in 1998 to found ZIVA after working in New York City as a graphic designer, art director, and educator. His book, Afrikan Alphabets: the Story of Writing in Africa (2004) —besides being of historical importance, it is also the first book on Afrikan typography.

His award-winning ﬁlm, Shungu: The Resilience of a People had its world premiere at the 2009 International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA). He has recently (February, 2019) keynoted the ﬁrst ever Pan African Design Institute (PADI) conference in Ghana. https://portal.cca.edu/events-calendar/saki-mafundikwa/

AAE speakers

https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Saki+Mafundikwa/389690

foresight for development

https://www.foresightfordevelopment.org/video-library/saki-mafundikwa-ingenuity-and-elegance-in-ancient-african-alphabets

SAKI MAFUNDIKWA: INGENUITY AND ELEGANCE IN ANCIENT AFRICAN ALPHABETS

From simple alphabets to secret symbolic languages, graphic designer Saki Mafundikwa celebrates the many forms of written communication across the continent of Africa. He highlights the history and legacy that are embodied in written words and symbols, and urges African designers to draw on these graphic forms for fresh inspiration. It's summed up in his favorite Ghanaian glyph, Sankofa, which means "return and get it" -- or "learn from the past."

Saki Mafundikwa: The Intricate World of African Writing Systems, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew4cJDgXw7M

THE WORLD’S WRITING SYSTEMS

https://www.worldswritingsystems.org/

wiki mentions

You may create the page "Saki Mafundikwa", but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.

Wiki pages that link to Saki:
 * McDonald's African American Heritage Series Lyte - Underground Railroad Avery Brooks - Closing Statement Artwork: Saki Mafundikwa Scriptwriter: Ann Ashwood Music: Jana Productions, NAJEE & RIZE Publisher:  1 KB (104 words) - 05:46, 31 May 2020
 * Timothy Botts well as ancient African scripts he came across from some research of Saki Mafundikwa. He also included 19th century American adaptations of Black Letter  6 KB (766 words) - 02:28, 23 August 2020
 * Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series Winter 2015-03-26 Tacita Dean Visual Artist 2015 Winter 2015-03-19 Saki Mafundikwa Graphic Designer, Typographer and Design Educator 2015 Winter 2015-03-12  32 KB (676 words) - 16:09, 13 October 2021
 * Writing systems of Africa alphabets and Yoruba holy-writing. African Language Studies 10:161-191 Mafundikwa, Saki. 2004. Afrikan alphabets: the story of writing in Afrika. West New  27 KB (3,140 words) - 21:59, 7 February 2022


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