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Director/Founder

Saki Mafundikwa
Graphic Designer, Design Educator, Author, Filmmaker,Photographer and Farmer
 
 

Saki Mafundikwa | Founding Director

Our founder and director holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University, USA. He 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. His first film, Shungu: The Resilience of a People a feature-length documentary has 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 and is the first Zimbabwean to speak at TED. He is currently working on the first Afrikan Design text book. He has run workshops and spoken at design conferences in Afrika, Europe, the US and South America.
 

Talks by Saki Mafundikwa

Publications

Etapes Graphiques magazine, Paris, France, August 2009
Novum “Afrika Issue”, Munich, Germany, July 2009
 
 
AREA 2: Phidon, UK, Jan 2008 
Tipografica 74, Argentina, 2007
“Harare’s Unsung Type Heroes” eye magazine UK, vol 15, Spring 2006
 
 
SocialDesignZine, Andrea Rauch & Gianni Sinni, Lcdedizioni Rome, 2005
Radical Type Design, Teal Triggs, Collins Design UK, 2005
 
 
Author “Afrikan Alphabets”: Mark Batty Publisher, May 2004 
Items, Netherlands, November 2004
iD, USA, November 2004
World Graphic Design, Geoffrey Caban, Merrell UK, April 2004
eye, UK, October 2004
Enjin, South Africa, September 2004
 
 
upperandlowercaseonline, Winter 2000
dwell magazine, San Francisco, CA, June 2001
Etapes Graphiques magazine, #72, Paris, France, April 2001
Communication Arts, Design Annual, 2002
Typography in Afrika (essay): Culture Types, Graphis Books 2003
 


AREA 2: Phidon, UK, Jan 2008 
Tipografica 74, Argentina, 2007
“Harare’s Unsung Type Heroes” eye magazine UK, vol 15, Spring 2006
 

 

Please find some more of his works here.