Ziddi Msangi

Profile

Ziddi Msangi is a designer and educator. He was born in Tanzania and moved to California as a child. This early experience fostered an awareness and curiosity about history, power and place.

Cultural interpretation, and placing the narratives that form identities into a social, historical, and cultural context have influenced how Msangi teaches and designs. He is interested in the liminal space that is created between what we understand our reality to be and the multiple narratives that form that perception.

Research into cultural interpretation also informs his design practice. His recent investigations look at the synthesis of traditional motifs with contemporary content. He finds continual challenges to his assumptions about the power of visual communication in the space between the author’s intended message and the users response to the design. Msangi received a BFA from Boise State University and an MFA in Graphic Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has been a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth since 1998.