Ziddi Msangi, a designer and educator, holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1996).
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.
This includes designing for community engagement, understanding and applying Universal Design principles of inclusion and honoring the students lived experiences. This influence shows up regardless of what level Prof. Msangi teaches at (undergraduate as well as the graduate level) and this also influences him in his administrative leadership when he served as Graduate Program Director for the Visual Design program.
His ongoing visual research and exploration is about the form and meaning of the East African cloth wrap, Kanga. The results have been presented nationally and internationally including Rhode Island School of Design, Hongik University in Seoul, Korea and University of Johannesburg in South Africa.