Thematic areas and Contributions

Issue 43 proposes a set of conceptual directions intended to stimulate critical thoughts across the field of visual communication design, including:

• When automated systems can produce large quantities of visual outputs, the knowledge of design processes becomes a crucial field for design education. How can these practices be documented, represented, communicated, and taught as forms of knowledge, design agency, and ethical responsibility?
  
  
• For students and younger generations of designers, the history of past processes and experiments in typography, printing, montage and visual storytelling can reveal alternative ways of thinking and designing visual communication. What role can the teaching of these practices play within design education today?
  
  
• Design archives and historiographic research increasingly reveal the processes, contexts, and cultural frameworks within which visual communication artefacts were produced. How can this knowledge influence design practice in a context where visual production is increasingly automated?
  
  
• Generative AI systems challenge traditional notions of authorship by introducing new forms of automated visual production. Where does authorship reside when visual artefacts are produced through algorithmic systems?
  
  
• Craft-based design practices foreground the relationship between thinking and making, emphasizing the role of experimentation, iterative practice, and the articulation between visual structure and execution in communication processes. What role can these practices play in redefining authorship and agency in contemporary visual communication design?
  
  
• While automation opens new perspectives in managing design complexity, it also raises urgent questions related to transparency, accountability, and the conscious understanding and management of the processes themselves. How can visual communication design make automated processes transparent and intelligible, redefining the designer's responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence?
  
  
• Artificial intelligence is transforming not only design practice, but also the ways we visualize and access knowledge. How are AI-based interventions in the representation and interpretation of design history taking place, and what implications do they have for the construction of historical knowledge and its critical understanding?

Types of Contributions

Contributions published in Progetto Grafico are divided into four sections:

• Research – Scientific essays on the theme of the call (25,000–30,000 characters, including spaces), in one of the following categories: Experiment (applied research and design innovations), Mapping (case studies and critical analyses of design experiences), Narrate (historical research on relevant phenomena, figures, or artifacts).
  
  
• Visualize – Scientific communication artifacts (infographics, maps, experimental visualizations, videos, interactive representations).
  
  
• Discover – Critical book reviews (max. 7,000 characters).
  
  
• Wander – Scientific essays off-topic but of particular academic interest (25,000–30,000 characters, including spaces).