Sixteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

The world has seen a dramatic uptick in the consumption and appreciation of Afrofuturism as both a pedagogical mode as well as visual identity. Within this subset, there has arisen the movement of Afropolitanism, which speaks to the nature of an holistic appreciation/ avocation of the many cultures and countries located within the African Diaspora. Within this movement, fascinating transcultural artefacts have begun to arise under the auspice of Africa’s rapidly growing comic and animation industries, in which new visual genres such as Afromanga (a fusion of Japanese Manga and African Visual Aesthetics) are growing rapidly. This research therefore seeks to deliberate upon the new aesthetic conventions of intergenre through an investigation of a series of Afromanga produced in Southern Africa (particularly South Africa and Zimbabwe). This includes an Honours-level student research product conducted at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa that sought to investigate and generate work within this specific and new form of comic making.