Pictorials, as a unique form of visual communication, offer an opportunity for image-text-based communication and learning. This form of communication has been a part of human culture for thousands of years, dating back to ancient cave paintings, medieval tapestries, and early religious manuscripts. They are an essential form of communication that transcends language barriers and allows for the expression of complex ideas, emotions, and experiences. As a conference on visual discourse, we aim to foster perspectives that integrate the practice and research of image-making with meaningful textual information. We encourage innovation in conveying design processes, practices, narratives, and artifacts to the visual discourse community.. Pictorials provide a platform for researchers, practitioners, industry professionals, artists, designers, and students from various fields to present their work in visually engaging formats. This format stimulates in-depth discussions, facilitating the sharing of new methods, insights, and lessons from the design of visual narratives across different design disciplines.

Submission Submission Portal

We invite submissions of Pictorials for our upcoming conference “Visual Discourse 2024”, encouraging researchers, designers, and artists to explore and present their work through visual narratives. We welcome Pictorials in various forms, including but not limited to comics, graphic novels, games, animation, and movies. This format is ideal for conveying complex ideas, creative processes, or design explorations that benefit from rich visual storytelling.

Submit the pictorial abstract first by 30th September 2024. The acceptance will be conveyed based on the abstract. Pictorials should be presented as a cohesive visual narrative that effectively communicates the research, design insights, or creative outcomes. All accepted abstracts will get a chance to present at the conference. Submit your full paper in the given format (30th October 2024) for publication as per the timeline.

We look forward to receiving Pictorials that push the boundaries of traditional research presentation and highlight the importance of visual storytelling in the field of Design.

Your submission should include in-text citations within the pictorial format (see "Unflattening" by Nick Sousanis for examples). A pictorial submission is expected to display the same rigour as a traditional textual research paper and hence contain citations and a list of bibliographic references used. The author/s are encouraged to use the format as creatively as possible while retaining the communication of the pictorial paper accessible to a wider audience.

Abstract Submission format

• A 200-word abstract of your pictorial paper is mandatory. Do not include any in-text citations. Includes maximum 5 keywords relevant to your paper.
• Submit a one-page pictorial abstract of the paper or a page from the paper as per the pictorial paper template. This can be a small part of your full pictorial paper that should help the reviewers understand the visual style of the pictorial paper, text choices, and other choices of graphic elements. If selected, you will be invited to present your paper during the conference dates.
• Please add your name and affiliation in the abstract
• Full pictorial paper is optional at this stage. But if your pictorial paper is ready, you may submit it along with the abstract.

Full paper Submission format

• Submit a full paper in a single pdf format using the same pictorial paper template.
• Final paper submissions should be formatted as a single PDF document, with a maximum of 12 pages (including references).
• Please ensure that your submission does not contain any identification with your name, as all submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed, with attention given to the quality of the visual narrative, clarity of communication, and the relevance of the content to the conference themes
• Ensure that the file size does not exceed more than 50 MB. The lesser, the better, while retaining the resolution will help us send it to reviewers easily.
• The layout should be visually engaging, utilizing a combination of images, sketches, diagrams, and minimal text to guide the viewer through the narrative.
• You can use colour as well as black and white images as per your choice. You are encouraged to use this format to emphasize the visual aspects of their work, making it accessible and impactful.

Requirements Post Acceptance

Upon acceptance, additional details and requirements will be provided to the participants via email. You will be required to make the necessary revisions to your work based on the feedback and suggestions received from the reviewers to ensure that the final version meets the conference standards and expectations.

Note: AT LEAST ONE participant per submission MUST attend the conference to present the work and be included in the conference manual.

Resources

Download the Pictorial pdf template

Download the InDesign template

A few examples of pictorials papers

• James Pierce and Carl DiSalvo. 2017. Dark Clouds, Io&#!+, and [Crystal Ball Emoji]: Projecting Network Anxieties with Alternative Design Metaphors. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1383-1393. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3064663.3064795
• Pauline Gourlet and Thierry Dassé. 2017. Cairn: A Tangible Apparatus for Situated Data Collection, Visualization and Analysis. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 247-258. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3064663.3064794
• Thomas Dykes, Jayne Wallace, Mark Blythe, and James Thomas. 2016. Paper Street View: A Guided Tour of Design and Making Using Comics. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 334-346. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901904
• Elvin Karana, Elisa Giaccardi, Niels Stamhuis, and Jasper Goossensen. 2016. The Tuning of Materials: A Designer’s Journey. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 619-631. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901909
• Message Journal, Issue 5: COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE Capturing visual insights, thoughts and reflections on 2020/21 and beyond… https://shorturl.at/z5f7a

Contact Information

For further inquiries regarding the submission process or the conference details, please contact the organizing committee at pictorialpapers@visualdiscourse.design .