Ziddi Msangi
is an educator who cares deeply about fostering his students’ progress as educated citizens while achieving the highest standards of professionalism and creativity. He has been a Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth for twelve years and holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His professional work focuses on graphic design for social-profit organizations. Clients include William McDonough & Partners, Charlottesville, Virginia; Onus Jazz Quintet; Brooklyn Arts Council; and Ngurudoto Lodge, Arusha, Tanzania. Ethnography and locating narratives in specific times and spaces have influenced how Ziddi teaches and designs. He actively seeks knowledge outside his field, making visual connections with what he learns and inviting his students into that process. Research into ethnography also informs his design practice. Most of his freelance projects have been framed by the idea of cultural interpretation. He finds continual challenges to his assumptions about the power of visual communication in the space between an author’s intended message and a viewer’s response to design work. Ziddi’s main concern lies in placing the narratives that form identities into a social, historical, and cultural context. 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. In his own words, “Glimmers of this threshold emerge and then are absorbed into the momentum of life. My goal is to suspend it long enough to see clearly.”
Faculty Notes
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