For centuries, artists and designers have been creating communicative graphics. With the advent of new forms of media, the emergence of paradigms such as ubiquitous computing, and the rapid evolution of interaction devices, there is a continuous cycle of renewal of the technologies and methods to support artists, interaction designers and developers. Developingnewapproachesrequiresanunderstandingofthe fundamentals of perception and cognition as they relate to interaction and communication te- nologies, together with arti?cial intelligence and computer graphics techniques to automate reasoning and enhance cognition. Smart Graphics is in essence an interdisciplinary endeavor and brings together the ?elds of computer graphics, arti?cial intelligence, cognitive science, graphic design and ?ne art. The International Symposium on Smart Graphics 2008 was held on August 27–29 in Rennes, France. It was the ninth event in a series which originally started in 2000 as an American Association for Arti?cial Intelligence Spring Symposium and has taken place every year since then. Due to the high quality of the papers submitted this year, the ProgramCommittee decided to accept 17 fullpapers(insteadoftheusual15),9shortpapersand3systemdemonstrations. The acceptance rate for full papers was 34%. This year’s meeting included a discussion as to the nature of the shape, contentandfutureoftheevent.Representativesfromdi?erentcommunitieswere invitedtogivetheiropinions,andtheorganizingcommitteewouldliketowarmly thank them here. Such questions as the ongoing viability of the symposium and theconsequencesofco-locatingSmartGraphicswithotherlargerresearchevents led to interesting debates and have prepared the groundwork for what could be the future of the Smart Graphics conferenceseries.
