Design Thinkers: ‘Design is my weapon, Zimbabwe is my country’

DESIGN THINKERS CONFERENCE — Look in any direction, from almost anywhere in downtown Toronto, and more likely than not you’ll see advertising. Writing this story in a downtown café, my view is of a larger-than-life iPod ad, painted onto the entire outside wall of a restaurant. Just down the street, west of the iPod wall a huge billboard tells me that cardigans at H&M are only $39.99. Cheap, I think, where’s the closest H&M?

My personal weaknesses aside, no one can deny the power of advertising. It is ubiquitous — advertising has encroached on public and mental space to such an extent we hardly notice it. Which is partly why the use of images to sell corporate products elicits such highly emotional resistance; we simply can’t avoid being advertised to.

As an internationally renowned and respected graphic designer and professor at the Massachusetts College of Art, Chaz Maviyane-Davies says he has chosen to use his power as a designer for good, not for the evils of consumerism. And he has come to the Design Thinkers conference to inspire other designers to help create a visual language of resistance against corporate and political subversion.

“I call it creative defiance,” he says. “We live in a world where illusion serves as reality, and we have been taught that our own intrinsic visions are worthless. Slavery exists today, slavery of the mind. I want to know how design fits into that fractured world. As designers, we have the luxury of communication through creativity.”

Born in Zimbabwe, Maviyane-Davies fled the racism and subjugation there for London, England, where he learned his trade. Hoping to see Zimbabwe in a better situation when he returned in 1982, he was devastated to find that in his absence Zimbabweans had only traded in one form of terror for another under the leadership of Robert Mugabe.

“I hate racism, injustice, inequality,” Maviyane-Davies says. “My mother still lives in Zimbabwe, where she doesn’t always have electricity, running water. Because this is the reality in the country I am from, this is my inspiration. Design is my weapon, Zimbabwe is my country.”

Maviyane-Davies focuses on the environment, racism, violence and political oppression in his images. Of course, the companies paying big bucks to graphic designers are not the companies promoting messages that fall in line with Maviyane-Davies’ values. And as he explains, it has taken him almost 20 years to get to the point he can do the art he wants to do.

“This has not been an overnight process. I’ve definitely had to fight,” he says. “It’s taken 15, 20 years for me to get to do this work people now see me for. And for years I was doing work I am not proud of. But now, what I’m doing is graphic activism. If images are used to sell jeans and perfume, surely they can be used to promote justice, democracy, environmentalism. For example, if I’m promoting environmentalism, in my image I connect people to the environment, to things they see around them.

“[We use] film, images to project our culture these days, that’s how we preserve it. Graphic design is a discipline that can be used for a cause. I’ve come here to inspire and share. If I can reach one, two people, inspire them to go out and do good work, that’s enough for me.”

photos by Jessica Hume 

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Jessica Hume is covering the Design Thinkers Conference, Oct. 17-18 at the Metro Convention Centre.