I moved back home 15 years ago after a 20-year stay in the United States, and Africa called me back. And I founded my country's first graphic design and new media college. And I called it the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts. The idea, the dream, was really for a sort of Bauhaus sort of school where new ideas were interrogated and investigated, the creation of a new visual language based on the African creative heritage. We offer a two-year diploma to talented students who have successfully completed their high school education. And typography's a very important part of the curriculum and we encourage our students to look inward for influence. Here's a poster designed by one of the students under the theme "Education is a right." Some logos designed by my students. Africa has had a long tradition of writing, but this is not such a well-known fact, and I wrote the book "Afrikan Alphabets" to address that. The different types of writing in Africa, first was proto-writing, as illustrated by Nsibidi, which is the writing system of a secret society of the Ejagham people in southern Nigeria. So it's a special-interest writing system. The Akan of people of Ghana and [Cote d'Ivoire] developed Adinkra symbols some 400 years ago, and these are proverbs, historical sayings, objects, animals, plants, and my favorite Adinkra system is the first one at the top on the left. It's called Sankofa. It means, "Return and get it." Learn from the past. This pictograph by the Jokwe people of Angola tells the story of the creation of the world. At the top is God, at the bottom is man, mankind, and on the left is the sun, on the right is the moon. All the paths lead to and from God. These secret societies of the Yoruba, Kongo and Palo religions in Nigeria, Congo and Angola respectively, developed this intricate writing system which is alive and well today in the New World in Cuba, Brazil and Trinidad and Haiti. In the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Ituri society, the men pound out a cloth out of a special tree, and the women, who are also the praise singers, paint interweaving patterns that are the same in structure as the polyphonic structures that they use in their singing -- a sort of a musical score, if you may. In South Africa, Ndebele women use these symbols and other geometric patterns to paint their homes in bright colors, and the Zulu women use the symbols in the beads that they weave into bracelets and necklaces. Ethiopia has had the longest tradition of writing, with the Ethiopic script that was developed in the fourth century A.D. and is used to write Amharic, which is spoken by over 24 million people. King Ibrahim Njoya of the Bamum Kingdom of Cameroon developed Shü-mom at the age of 25. Shü-mom is a writing system. It's a syllabary. It's not exactly an alphabet. And here we see three stages of development that it went through in 30 years. The Vai people of Liberia had a long tradition of literacy before their first contact with Europeans in the 1800s. It's a syllabary and reads from left to right. Next door, in Sierra Leone, the Mende also developed a syllabary, but theirs reads from right to left. Africa has had a long tradition of design, a well-defined design sensibility, but the problem in Africa has been that, especially today, designers in Africa struggle with all forms of design because they are more apt to look outward for influence and inspiration. The creative spirit in Africa, the creative tradition, is as potent as it has always been, if only designers could look within. This Ethiopic cross illustrates what Dr. Ron Eglash has established: that Africa has a lot to contribute to computing and mathematics through their intuitive grasp of fractals. Africans of antiquity created civilization, and their monuments, which still stand today, are a true testimony of their greatness. Most probably, one of humanity's greatest achievements is the invention of the alphabet, and that has been attributed to Mesopotamia with their invention of cuneiform in 1600 BC, followed by hieroglyphics in Egypt, and that story has been cast in stone as historical fact. That is, until 1998, when one Yale professor John Coleman Darnell discovered these inscriptions in the Thebes desert on the limestone cliffs in western Egypt, and these have been dated at between 1800 and 1900 B.C., centuries before Mesopotamia. Called Wadi el-Hol because of the place that they were discovered, these inscriptions -- research is still going on, a few of them have been deciphered, but there is consensus among scholars that this is really humanity's first alphabet. Over here, you see a paleographic chart that shows what has been deciphered so far, starting with the letter A, "ālep," at the top, and "bêt," in the middle, and so forth. It is time that students of design in Africa read the works of titans like Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal's Cheikh Anta Diop, whose seminal work on Egypt is vindicated by this discovery. The last word goes to the great Jamaican leader Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the Akan people of Ghana with their Adinkra symbol Sankofa, which encourages us to go to the past so as to inform our present and build on a future for us and our children. It is also time that designers in Africa stop looking outside. They've been looking outward for a long time, yet what they were looking for has been right there within grasp, right within them. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Prije 15 godina vratio sam se kući, nakon 20-godišnjeg boravka u SAD-u. Afrika me pozvala natrag. U svojoj zemlji osnovao sam prvi studij za grafički dizajn i nove medije. Nazvao sam ga Zimbabveanski institut za vigitalne umjetnosti. Ideja, san, bio je zapravo neka vrsta Bauhausa, škole u kojoj se nove ideje preispituju i istražuju. Stvaranje novog vizualnog jezika zasnovanog na afričkom kreativnom naslijeđu. Nudimo dvogodišnji studij talentiranim studentima koji su uspješno završili srednjoškolsko obrazovanje. Vrlo važan dio kurikuluma je tipografija, i mi ohrabrujemo naše studente da potraže u sebi utjecaje. Evo jednog plakata kojeg je dizajnirao naš student na temu: "Obrazovanje je pravo." Još neki logotipovi koje su dizajnirali moji studenti... Afrika ima dugu povijest pisanja, ali to nije baš općepoznata činjenica. Napisao sam knjigu "Afrička pisma" kako bih na to upozorio. Različite vrste pisanja u Africi... Prvo je bilo proto-pisanje, kao što ga ilustrira Nsibidi, sustav pisanja tajnog društva Ejaghamskog naroda u južnoj Nigeriji. To je sustav pisanja od posebnog interesa. Akanski narod Gane i Sijera Leonea prije 400-tinjak godina razvio je Adinkra simbole - izreke, povijesne poslovice, predmete, životinje, biljke... Moj najdraži Adinkra sustav je prvi gore slijeva. Zove se Sankofa. Znači: "Vrati se i ponesi." Uči iz prošlosti. Ovaj piktogram naroda Jokwe iz Angole kazuje nam priču o stvaranju svijeta. Na vrhu je Bog, a na dnu čovjek, čovječanstvo, lijevo je sunce, a desno mjesec. Svi putevi vode prema Bogu i od Boga. Ova tajna religijska društva Yoruba, Kongo i Palo u Nigeriji, Kongu i Angoli, razvila su ovaj složen sustav pisanja, živ i danas u Novom svijetu - na Kubi, u Brazilu, na Trinidadu i Haitiju. U prašumama Demokratske Republike Kongo, u zajednici Ituri, muškarci izrađuju tkaninu iz posebnog drveta, dok žene, koje, također, pjevaju i hvalospjeve, oslikavaju mustre koje se isprepliću, a jednake su strukture kao i polifone strukture koje one koriste u svom pjevanju. Neka vrsta glazbene partiture... U Južnoj Africi, žene Ndebele koriste ove simbole i druge geometrijske obrasce kako bi oslikale svoje domove žarkim bojama, a žene Zulu ove simbole koriste u perlama od kojih pletu narukvice i ogrlice. Etiopija ima najdužu povijest pisanja, etiopijskim pismom, razvijenim u četvrtom stoljeću, koje se koristi u pisanju Amharika, kojim govori preko 24 milijuna ljudi. Kralj Ibrahim Njoya Kamerunskog kraljevstva Bamum razvio je Shü-mom u dobi od 25 godina. Shü-mom je sustav pisanja. To je slovar. Nije to baš abeceda. Ovdje vidimo tri stadija razvoja kroz koje je prošao u 30 godina. Narod Vai iz Liberije imao je dugu tradiciju pismenosti prije prvog kontakta s Europljanima u 19. stoljeću. To je slovar koji se čita slijeva nadesno. U susjedstvu, u Sijera Leoneu, narod Mende također su razvili slovar, ali se njihov čita zdesna nalijevo. Afrika ima dugu tradiciju dizajna, vrlo istančanu osjećajnost za dizajn, ali afrički je problem taj da se posebno danas, dizajneri bore sa svim oblicima dizajna jer su skloniji izvan sebe tražiti utjecaje i inspiraciju. Kreativni duh u Africi, tradicija stvaranja, potentna je kao što je uvijek i bila, samo kad bi dizajneri potražili nadahnuće u sebi. Ovaj Etiopski križ ilustrira ono što je Dr. Ron Eglash utvrdio: Da Afrika može mnogo doprinijeti računarstvu i matematici svojim intuitivnim shvaćanjem fraktala. Drevni Afrikanci stvorili su civilizaciju, a njihovi spomenici, sačuvani i do danas, istinsko su svjedočanstvo njihove veličine. Jedno od, najvjerojatnije, najvećih postignuća čovječanstva izum je abecede. On se pripisuje Mezopotamcima koji su 1600 godina prije Krista izumili klinasto pismo; slijedili su ga hijeroglifi u Egiptu, i ta je priča uklesana u kamenu kao povijesna činjenica. Sve do 1998. kad je John Coleman Darnell, profesor s Yalea, otkrio ove zapise na vapnenačkim liticama, u Libijskoj pustinji u zapadnom Egiptu. Oni datiraju između 1800. i 1900. godine prije Krista, stoljećima prije Mezopotamije. Nazvani Wadi el-Hol, po mjestu gdje su otkriveni, ovi zapisi... istraživanja još traju, malo njih je dešifrirano, ali postoji konsenzus među učenjacima da je ovo uistinu prva abeceda u povijesti čovječanstva. Ovdje vidite paleografsku tablicu koja pokazuje što je dosad dešifrirano, počevši sa slovom A - "alep" na vrhu - i "bet" u sredini, i tako dalje... Vrijeme je da studenti dizajna u Africi pročitaju djela velikana poput Cheikha Anta Diopa, Senegalca Cheikha Anta Diopa, čija su ključna djela o Egiptu opravdana ovim otkrićem. Završna riječ posvećena je velikom jamajačkom vođi Marcusu Mosiahu Garveyu, i Akanskom narodu iz Gane, sa Sankofom, njihovim Adinkra simbolom, koji nas potiče da pođemo u prošlost kako bismo uobličili svoju sadašnjost i izgradili budućnost za sebe i za našu djecu. Ovo je i vrijeme da afrički dizajneri prestanu inspiraciju tražiti izvan Afrike. Dugo je već traže izvan nje, ali ono što traže nalazi se upravo ovdje nadohvat ruke, upravo u njima. Puno vam hvala. (Pljesak)