Call for Papers: Special Issue, Early 2027

Typographic Landscapes: Migrating Types—Typographic Meaning-Making Across Boundaries

Visible Language invites submissions for a special issue on the emerging field of typographic landscape research, which connects scholarship in typography, graphic communication, and sociolinguistics to investigate typographic activities as social practice in public spaces.

Typographic landscape research studies all forms of sign-making involving texts in urban, rural, and virtual contexts, ranging from commercial shop signs to self-authorized stickers, artistic murals, and posters, from commemorative placards to regulatory and infrastructural signage, created by professionals and laypeople alike.

The field recognizes that the form of written language, the materiality of letters and signs, and their placement in architectural and other settings are part of the constituted meaning of the messages on display. Typography is not merely a vehicle for linguistic content but communicates meaning through graphic form and materiality itself.

Typographic landscape research considers typographic work as social and communicative practice that is layered and situated across time and space, investigating the use of typographic resources as a means for social actors to perform identities, debate power relationships, negotiate spaces of inclusion or exclusion, signify belonging, challenge or manifest cultural hegemony, preserve local heritage, reference distant geographies, and transform shared places.

This issue will be of interest to anyone designing with type, text and language, particularly those interested in the social dimensions of typography and graphic design, as well as those working with graphic communication in built environments, architecture, urban, and rural spaces.

Submission deadline and contacts

The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, September 2, 2026. Earlier submissions are welcome. When creating your submission, please select the option “special issue article” from the options provided in the “section” field.

All submissions will undergo an initial desk review and those that are to be considered for publication will be subject to double-blind peer review. Final acceptance will require approval from both the guest editors and editor-in-chief.

The special issue is guest-edited by Irmi Wachendorff, University of Reading, UK, and Yu Li, Loyola Marymount University, USA. Inquiries may be sent to the guest editors or to Assistant Editor Matthew Baxter.

▶ Irmi Wachendorff (irmi.wachendorff[at]reading.ac.uk)

▶ Yu Li (yu.li[at]lmu.edu)

▶ Matthew Baxter (M.G.Baxter[at]leeds.ac.uk) More details are provided on the following page.

Scope and contributions sought

The title “Migrating Types—Typographic Meaning-Making across Boundaries” reflects the focus on typographic meaning-making between here and there, now and then, the self and the other, where such processes are especially active, productive, and consequential.

For this special issue, we are looking for submissions that focus specifically on typographic meaning-making in public (semiotic) spaces referencing across cultural, geographical, territorial, and temporal boundaries. Contributions might engage with (but are not limited to) the role of typography in:

▶ Spaces of exclusion, inclusion, migration, and cohabitation

▶ The depiction of social hierarchies, power structures, and social transformation

▶ The creation of belonging, performance of identity, and negotiation of ideologies

▶ Visual and cultural stereotypes, representation, and hegemony

▶ Place-making, preservation of local heritage and identities, commodification, and gentrification

We welcome submissions that:

▶ Draw on interdisciplinary scholarly foundations combining theoretical perspectives from graphic communication, typography, and sociolinguistics, as well as potentially social semiotics, anthropology, cultural, visual, and communication studies.

▶ Employ interdisciplinary methodological approaches (such as quantitative and qualitative empirical case studies, comparative cross-regional or historical analyses) and offer methodological innovations in data collection, mapping, coding, and frameworks for visual and multimodal analysis.

Criteria for inclusion

We expect robust, scholarly, analytical, and critical research. All submissions must meet the following criteria:

▶ Clearly stated research question

▶ Strong scholarly foundations and engagement with relevant theoretical frameworks

▶ Appropriate research design and transparent documentation of systematic data collection processes and parameters (such as sampling strategies, sample size, geographic and temporal scope)

▶ Use of visual data as essential evidence to construct and support the analytical argument

▶ Critical analysis that moves beyond describing typographic phenomena to analyzing their social, cultural, and ideological significance

▶ Balanced interpretations that, rather than isolated observations, connect findings to broader contexts and theoretical constructs and critically discuss limitations

▶ Articulation of significance and implications for the design discipline, design practice, and society

▶ Accessible writing style that combines scholarly rigor with clear prose and rich visual examples, serving the journal’s broad readership (practitioners, academics, and students)

▶ Stated ethical approval for the study and/or copyright permissions to reproduce images, as relevant to the research

▶ Submission of high-quality images following Visible Language guidelines

Structure and style

Submissions must follow the journal guidelines (with APA citations) and house style and include:

▶ Abstract (100–200 words)

▶ Introduction (with clearly stated research question)

▶ Research context (literature review, rationale, objectives)

▶ Methods

▶ Findings (including examples of visual material/data, as appropriate)

▶ Discussion (interpretation of results and implications)

▶ References (APA) https://www.visible-language.org/journal/ calls-and-submissions/