Dear Colleagues,
This is a friendly reminder that the deadline for proposals for a special issue on Aesthetics in Technical Communication for the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication is this Friday 10/31. We have already received a number of exciting submissions. For your convenience, we have once again pasted the full CFP below.
Call for Papers – Aesthetics in Technical Communication
For Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Scott Weedon and Jamie Littlefield, 2025
The goal of this special issue of the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication is to expand the field’s thinking about technical communication and aesthetics because we believe there is much more to explore. Technical communication, in its traditional forms of instructions, reports, user manuals, technical specifications and the like, primarily compiles, synthesizes, and delivers information for specific and general audiences in appropriate genres for practical situations. When aesthetic features are considered, considerations generally do not go much further than style or design elements such as choices of tone, color, and font that evoke a professional and business-like manner, a “clean look.”
This picture of aesthetics and technical communication neglects the many ways technical communication invites aesthetic experience. Suguru Ishizaki (2011) reminds us that “from a beautiful photograph of nature to the sleek design of wind turbines to the creative visualization of environmental data, communicating information often appeals to the audience’s aesthetic experience” (p. 1). For Ishizaki, an aesthetic experience is a pleasurable sensory experience of the formal properties of an object that is conditioned by cultural knowledge. The appeal of the wind turbine for us comes from our perception of its perfect aerodynamism and the cultural disposition to appreciate beauty in machines. Aesthetic pleasure in photographs, data displays, and machines, however, does not exhaust the aesthetic experience of technical communication. Ishizaki’s litany can be expanded to include instructional videos on Youtube or TikTok, educational programming of all kinds, or even painting or sculpture that takes the technical genres of the grid or the diagram as formal, thematic, or structural principles.
The role of aesthetics in technical, professional, and scientific communication has gained limited but growing attention, largely due to the pioneering work of Charles Kostelnick (1990, 1995, 2004, 2016, 2020). In the early days of personal computing, Kostelnick (1990) demonstrated remarkable foresight about the evolving role of technical communicators. He envisioned a future where these professionals would take on the role of "aestheticians," wielding "unprecedented control over document design" (p. 6). Building on Kostelnick’s work, Welhausen (2018) suggests that technical communication instructors help students develop a more nuanced understanding of the rhetorical role of aesthetics by considering both visual appeal and design style. Visual appeal might be understood as the pleasure derived from design choices such as the selection and placement of images, the layout and use of white space, or the overall arrangement of an interface. Design style, on the other hand, draws attention to the “effects of a particular design style choice” (p. 11). Analyzing the aesthetic effects of a text through the lens of design style is less about observing degrees of pleasure and more about describing the specific affects the sensory elements of the text elicit. This nuanced perspective allows us to appreciate how equally appealing texts might each create a unique stylistic impression—be it "non-threatening," "creative," or "futuristic."
Lehua Ledbeter (2018) offers an expanded approach to design style in an examination of the aesthetics of self-care tutorials, especially those centering marginalized people’s concerns, “where procedural discourse” such as applying make-up or styling hair for people not addressed in mainstream beauty instructions, is also an opportunity for “identity and relationship building” (p. 287). More recently, in “The Technical Communicator as Artist: Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and Form in the Workplace,” Slater and Rosselot-Merritt (2024) draw on Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical aesthetic theory to frame technical communication work as a creative, artistic process. They suggest that the work of technical communicators has aesthetic implications through “creating and fulfilling desires, appetites, and expectations” in the minds of their readers, including vendors and clients (p. 65). Slater and Rosselot-Merritt contend that by taking an aesthetic approach, technical communicators are uniquely positioned to communicate value to external audiences.
Despite the robustness of this and other research, aesthetics receives only marginal concern from technical communication scholarship. What is left unaccounted for are the welter of ways different writers, designers, artists, creatives, influencers, and activists have taken up genres and forms of technical communication to achieve aesthetic aims or to activate their aesthetic potential for shifting perception and forming communities of sense. As the landscape for technical communication practice continues to shift from defined professional positions in technical and engineering contexts to a diverse set of spaces, media, and practices where technical forms, genres, and displays mediate, and even become the object of, aesthetic experience and cultural practices, technical, professional, and scientific communication scholarship should attend to this expansion and its potential for enriching the field.
Possible Topics for Aesthetics and Technical Communication
Potential avenues of research abound when we think about the junctures between aesthetics and technical communication that can be explored in pedagogical, professional, scientific and technical, and public spaces. Below, we offer suggestions for thinking about aesthetics through enduring topics of the field, yet were open to exploring other topics not listed .
- Defining Aesthetics for Technical Communication: The term aesthetics comes from the Greek word aisthētikós, which designates things apprehended through the senses. In the history of aesthetics from the 18th century to today, aesthetics is also associated with taste and deliberation. Where should technical communication scholarship look to think through the aesthetics of technical communication? How does an aesthetic effect relate or differ from a rhetorical one? Which theorists, methodologies, and/or methods help us recognize and work with the aesthetic potential of technical communication?
- Social Justice and Activism: In the conceptual art exhibitions D37 and 90120000, among others, contemporary artist Cameron Rowland arranges lending contracts, receipts of civil asset forfeiture, tax records, and other forms of documentation with repossessed objects and items manufactured with prison labor to draw out the machinations and histories of systemic racism. In what other ways are aesthetics and technical communication brought together to reveal and redress oppression, marginalization, and racism? What is the role of aesthetics in participatory/community-engaged technical communication seeking social justice?
- Tactical Technical Communication: Modupe Yusuf and Veena Namboodri Shioppa (2022) examine Black hair tutorials to demonstrate how user-generated procedural discourse can help users adapt technologies for their own ends and intervene in “normative Eurocentric aesthetics” of hairstyle and care (p. 264). In what other ways and venues are technical communicators generating alternatives to institutional or normative aesthetics? How are aesthetics in DIY, user-generated, or tactical technical communication used to create identification and form communities of sense? And how does attending to aesthetics help technical communicators take technical and professional communication “beyond ‘how to do it’ and ‘how I do it’ toward ‘how we must view it in order to do it’’ (p. 263)?
- Big Data and AI: Researchers in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and rhetorical studies have explored how aggregations of data inspire and partly constitute imaginaries of order and control (Halpern, 2015; Murphy, 2017) and engender an aesthetic sense of coherence out of abundance (Rice, 2017). How else are we allured by displays and visualizations of big data? How do the aesthetics of AI performance persuade us? What is the role of AI text-to-image generators in shaping taste and style for art and business?
- Multimodal Communication: While visual technical communication is exhorted to be concise and direct, Charles Kostelnick (2016) reveals a long history and a recent reemergence of emotional appeal in data design and visualization. Charts, graphs, comics, and other displays can elicit a range of emotional responses through design choices. How might we expand our knowledge of technical communication’s aesthetic appeal through other modalities, senses, and technologies? When does a display’s emotional appeal become an aesthetic appeal, and conversely, how are aesthetic appeals attached to emotional ones? What are the aesthetic possibilities of interactive data displays and virtual reality technologies? How do we approach sensory-inclusive design in technical communication for neurodivergent audiences?
- Scientific, Health, and Environmental Communication: Since the beginning of inquiry into aesthetics in the 18th century, technical and scientific objects have been thought to have aesthetic qualities (Shelly, 2022). Chad Wickman (2013) and T. Kenny Fountain (2014) have each shown how aesthetics can motivate the making of scientific knowledge in the lab, in the classroom, and for the museum. Pushing this work further, we ask how aesthetics figure into genres of scientific, health, and environmental communication. What, perhaps, is the role of aesthetics in communicating uncertainty in scientific and technical reports? How do artistic and/or technical representations of our environmental future persuade us?
- User Experience: While usability focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness with which users can accomplish tasks, user experience (UX) encompasses a broader spectrum that includes usability but also emphasizes the user’s emotional journey, particularly the pleasure derived from interacting with a product or system. (See: Verhulsdonck & Shalamova, 2020). What role do aesthetics play in creating pleasurable experiences for users? In what ways do aesthetic considerations influence user behavior? How might an expanded understanding of aesthetic pleasure influence UX research or practice as it relates to technical communication?
Prospective Timeline: Please send proposals of roughly 400-500 words with the subject line “CFP JTWC” to Scott Weedon (scott.weedon) and Jamie Littlefield (jamielit) as a .docx file by 10/31.
- Deadline for proposals: 10/31.
- Proposal decisions: 11/15.
- Drafts due 2/15:
- Publication of Special Issue in October 2026.
Editors’ Bios:
Scott Weedon, Ph.D. (he/him), is Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. scott.weedon
Jamie Littlefield (she/her) is a former Google Fiber Digital Inclusion Fellow, currently working towards a PhD in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. jamielit
References:
Fountain, T. K. (2014). Rhetoric in the flesh: Trained vision, technical expertise, and the gross anatomy lab. Routledge.
Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful data: A history of vision and reason since 1945. Duke University Press.
Ishizaki, S. (2011). A model of aesthetic experience. 2011 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, Cincinnati, OH, USA, 2011, pp. 1-3, https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2011.6087208
Kostelnick, C. (1990). Typographical design, modernist aesthetics, and professional communication. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 4(1), 5–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/105065199000400101
Kostelnick, C. (2004). Melting-pot ideology, modernist aesthetics, and the emergence of graphical conventions: The statistical atlases of the United States, 1874–1925. In C.A. Hill and M Chalmers (Eds) Defining visual rhetorics (pp. 215-242). London: Routledge.
Kostelnick, C. (2016). The re-emergence of emotional appeals in interactive data visualization. Technical Communication, 63(2), 116-135.
Kostelnick, C. (2020). The art of visual design: The rhetoric of aesthetics in technical communication. Technical Communication, 67(4), 6-27.
Ledbetter, L. (2018). The rhetorical work of YouTube’s beauty community: Relationship-and identity-building in user-created procedural discourse. Technical Communication Quarterly, 27(4), 287–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2018.1518950
Murphy, M. (2017). The economization of life. Duke University Press.
Rice, J. (2017). The rhetorical aesthetics of more: On archival magnitude. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 50(1), 26-49.
Shelley, J. (2022). The concept of the aesthetic. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 edition). Stanford University.https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aesthetic-concept/
Slater, J., & Rosselot-Merritt, J. (2024). The technical communicator as artist: Rhetoric, aesthetics, and form in the workplace. Technical Communication, 71(2), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.55177/tc547418
Welhausen, C. A. (2018). Toward a topos of visual rhetoric: Teaching aesthetics through color and typography. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 48(2), 132–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047281616646752
Wickman, C. (2013). Observing inscriptions at work: Visualization and text production in experimental physics research. Technical Communication Quarterly, 22(2), 150-171.
Yusuf, M., & Schioppa, V. N. (2022). A technical hair piece: Metis, social justice and technical communication in Black hair care on YouTube. Technical Communication Quarterly, 31(3), 263-282.
Verhulsdonck, G., & Shalamova, N. (2020). Creating content that influences people: Considering user experience and behavioral design in technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 50(4), 376–400. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047281619880286