The Poster is pleased to make a call for submissions for its inaugural issue. Details of the 
call can be found below, as can the journal's aims and scope. Any other details can be 
found at: 
– tinyurl.com/theposterjournal –
or by emailing the Lead Editor at:
– [log in to unmask] –

Yours sincerely.

Simon Downs.
------------------------------

Call for Submissions
The journal The Poster has  been founded as a forum to promote debates around the 
following issues:
> The ways in which visual devices are used to sway, persuade, provoke, unite and 
divide us.
> The impulse  behind the use of visual means to make rhetorical points.
> The means that are deployed to make such visual rhetorical points.
> How the material nature and placement of the means affects the rhetoric.
If it is even possible to effectively direct understanding through visual rhetorical means.

These are urgent issues in our increasingly mediated world. The act of making persuasive 
interventions is a massively multidisciplinary process: the effect of these interventions is 
of vital importance in promoting public dialogues and forming healthy political structures.

Political actions succeed or fail on their ability to engage with a heterogeneous mass of 
actors, uniting them in a common cause. Public health campaigns either function or 
people die. If successful communications shape global patterns of consumption, perhaps 
they could save the world? If visual rhetorical systems possess this persuasive power 
shouldn't we explore their limits and find the wisdom to use them well. In exploring these 
issues we are seeking textual and visual practice submissions on the following subjects:

1. What is meant by 'Visual Rhetoric' and 'The Public Sphere'?
2. Why the poster stands as a symbol for visual rhetorical practice: A privileged signifier 
of rhetoric, over and above every other instance of the visual which also persuades or 
affects behaviour…and if so, why and how?
3. What new forms have taken up the torch of visual rhetorical action?
4. Does the poster still have a role in the panoply of visual rhetorical media?
5. In a networked world who now owns and controls the means of rhetorical production?
6. What alternative/critical projects and strategies are possible and how will these new 
visual rhetorical manifestations operate?
7. To what degree it is possible to influence people's hearts and change people's minds 
through visual rhetorical means?
8.Is it possible to create a neutral information vehicle that informs in a non-partisan way?
9. Is there a difference between visual and other forms of rhetoric?
10. Do visual rhetoricians have a moral responsibility for the means they put at the 
disposal of their clients and the messages they devise?
11.Is it possible to create an analysis system appropriate to posters?

If you have an interest in any of these areas we would encourage you to make a 
submission.

Submissions can be theoretical or philosophical in nature, from essays on industrial 
practice (e.g. successful campaigns, analysis of trends and methods) to visual artefacts 
from practitioners in the field of visual communication (e.g. Graphics, Illustration, 
Curation, Experience Design, Photography, etc.)

The Aims of the Journal
The Poster is a forum for the study of visual rhetoric in the public sphere; a place to 
discuss how and why visual messages are thrust into the world and the media forms used 
to do so. This peer-reviewed journal stands as a vehicle for the ideas of media theorists; 
scholars of Cultural Studies and Cultural Materialism; for social psychologists of visual 
communication, for architects and designers of wayfinding schemes; for philosophers of 
Aesthetics and Politics, Society and Linguistics; for social scientists, anthropologists and 
ethnographers; for political campaigners and artist activists; for communications 
researchers and visual communications practitioners.

The poster maker, the pamphleteer and the tagger aim to sway the popular heart and 
mind through visual public interventions. As new technologies rise; turning the public 
sphere into a transparent, ubiquitous communications medium and a global marketplace; 
is the privileged status of the poster doomed or are we seeing it transformed as part of a 
new wave of visual rhetoric?  When the environment starts to become responsive to our 
very presence and aware of our individual nature what is the role of the 'traditional 
poster' delivering a classical rhetorical message? This journal aims to lead the debate.

The Poster is fully refereed and peer-reviewed through a rigorous review process 
conducted by our international Editorial Board and team of Associate Editors, selected for 
their ability to bring a unique insight into the applications of visual rhetoric in the public 
sphere and their academic strength as researchers and practitioners. Each contribution 
will be independently reviewed by a pair of reviewers, with a third reviewer being sought 
to abitrate in the case of an initial  disagreement between the first reviewers.

The Scope of the Journal
The Poster stands as a privileged symbol of visual rhetoric manifest in the world, and as 
such visual rhetoric is the heart of this journal.  Once the poster was a simple beast, it's 
role was that of a  focused shout; a singular message delivered as powerfully as could be 
devised into the melee of the public sphere. As such every rhetorical visual form intended 
to sway hearts and minds; from Luther's Thesis nailed to the church door in Wittenberg to 
that glorious symbol of Western civilization that is Times Square in New York City; could 
easily fall within the journal's purview.  As the visual rhetorical impulse grows ever 
stronger; with every miniscule social group having the means and media savvy to 
visually project their case into the public sphere; the material nature of the poster is in 
flux. Things are changing and this change is the founding impulse behind the creation of 
the journal.

We offer this journal as a forum to examine the role of the poster in its fullest and richest 
sense. As a social, graphical, aesthetic, philosophic and historic device inhabiting the 
junction formed by the visual rhetorical impulse and the social environment that the 
impulse acts upon. The physical form and manufacture of an artefact is often confused 
with its function. This journal will not be constrained by restrictive discussion of purely 
historic materials and forms. Rather we will engage with an exploration of all forms of 
public-facing communication intended to persuade us by focusing our attention on a 
singular message. We invite contributions on the rhetorical forms themselves: historic 
and traditional poster forms, movie & game microsites, location specific mobile 
advertising, viral media, artworks affecting the public sphere, architectural wayfinding 
schemes, public display technologies, public interactive media, geographically targeted 
advertising. Moving beyond these rhetorical manifestation we seek contributions grounded 
in the theory and philosophy of such communications: public political interventions, the 
systems science of communication, the social reception of artefacts, the psychology of 
visual rhetoric and the anthropology of public messages.

We find ourselves in the midst of a communications revolution. The form of the poster 
has never been more diverse, the intention to deliver a message never more ubiquitous 
or yet more individually targeted.

The journal is actively looking for both theoretical and practice based contributions to it's 
refereed content, but also recognises that many with an active interest and expertise in 
the area are from outside the academic sphere: to this end we invite those who 
contribute vitality to the visual rhetorical landscape to send in their work as non-refereed 
submissions.