Reading Images

This third edition of the landmark textbook Reading Images builds on its reputation as the first systematic and comprehensive account of the grammar of visual design. Drawing on an enormous range of examples from children's drawings to textbook illustrations, photo-journalism to fine art, as well as three-dimensional forms such as sculpture and toys, the authors examine the ways in which images communicate meaning.

Features of this fully updated third edition include:

• new material on diagrams and data visualization








• a new approach to the theory of 'modality'








• a discussion of how images and their uses have changed since the first edition








• examples from a wide range of digital media including websites, social media, I-phone interfaces and computer games








• ideas on the future of visual communication.

Reading Images presents a detailed outline of the 'grammar' of visual design and provides the reader with an invaluable 'tool-kit' for reading images in their contemporary multimodal settings. A must for students and scholars of communication, linguistics, design studies, media studies and the arts.

'Reading Images has taught us how to look at and interpret images made over thousands of years. In this masterfully revised and expanded edition, Kress and van Leeuwen are doing it again, bringing us right back to the digital age. Their social semiotic theory has just become even more appealing and authoritative.'

Adam Jaworski, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

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'If images have gradually become central in communication, we have to discuss ways to read them. This book is not about rules, or right vs wrong; instead, it provides us the opportunity to reflect on images and processes of meaning-making. That is why this book is a ?must read? for anyone interested in visual communication.'?

Clarice Gualberto, UFMG, Brazil

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Praise for the first edition:

'Reading Images is the most important book in visual communication since Jacques Bertin's Semiology of Information Graphics. It is both thorough and thought-provoking; a remarkable breakthrough.'

Kevin G. Barnhurst, Syracuse University, USA