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This research explores two interconnected questions: (1) How do we approach stylistic features of multimodal rhetorical artifacts such as protest posters? (2) Do said artifacts designed for different purposes exhibit systematic stylistic differences? Drawing on Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic categorization, this study develops a framework for examining concision, one of the primary stylistic considerations for multimodal rhetorical artifacts such as protest posters. This paper illustrates the use of this framework by exploring the correlation between rhetorical purpose and concision in posters created and disseminated before and during the 2011–2012 Québécois student movement. This study fine-tunes our existing knowledge on multimodality with style sensitivity, and demonstrates how an economy-of-sign based semiotic approach could enrich the empirical examination of multimodal rhetorical artifacts by generating more controlled interpretations.