Riot grrrl punk: a case study in the personal politics of British riot grrrl fanzines

Riot grrrl began as an independent music and political movement in the early 1990s emerging initially in the USA and few years later in the UK. From the beginning riot grrrl embraced a 'do-it-yourself' ethos operating outside the mainstream music business organising independent music festivals, workshop events and encouraging self-published fanzines (fan magazines which were distributed primarily through word of mouth, music gigs, artists and zine book fairs or by post). These zines became recognisable forms of personal expression and made visible a specific DIY approach alongside the development of a coherent style of graphic language in the producer's use of the photocopier, handwritten and graffiti texts, cut-n-paste and ransom note lettering style, collage and the co-option of mainstream media imagery. These production techniques made fanzine publishing accessible and played a central role in the development of a non-hierarchical community.

The essays in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design foreground the rhetorical functions of design artifacts. Rhetoric, normally understood as verbal or visual messages that have a tactical persuasive objective—a speech that wants to convince us to vote for someone, or an ad that tries to persuade us to buy a particular product—becomes in Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design the persuasive use of a broad set of meta-beliefs. Designed objects are particularly effective at this second level of persuasion because they offer audiences communicative data that reflect, and also orchestrate, a potentially broad array of cultural concerns. Persuasion entails both the aesthetic form and material composition of any object.

Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design features ten scholarly essays steeped in rhetorical analysis of artifacts, as well as two visual essays on the topic of ornamental typography with accompanying verbal texts. The essays in this collection span a number of design disciplines, including manufacturing design, graphic design, architectural design, and monument design. Contributors include Leslie Atzmon, Gerry Beegan, Guillemette Bolens, Kate Catterall , Barry Curtis, Michael Golec, Vladimir Kulik, Ryan Molloy, Teal Triggs, Jane Webb, Jack Williamson, and Lori Young.

• Publisher