Reading Images

This second 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 second edition include:

new material on moving images and on colour
a discussion of how images and their uses have changed through time
websites and web-based images
ideas on the future of visual communication.

Reading Images focuses on the structures or 'grammar' of visual design – colour, perspective, framing and composition – provides the reader with an invaluable 'tool-kit' for reading images and makes it a must for anyone interested in communication, the media and the arts.

Customer Reviews:

A unique and useful approach to visual design

By cyanpepper - January 17, 2011

I found this book to be incredibly insightful. While most books about visual design talk almost exclusively about esthetic principals and elements, this book looks at the meaning the viewer derives from visual layout and design. While esthetics is important in design, photography, and art, the meaning being conveyed is also extremely important.

This book is a bit of a heavy read - it is, after all, a textbook - but I knew it would be when I picked it up, having just read Van Leeuwen's "Introducing Social Semiotics: An Introductory Textbook". I see a couple of negative reviews here from students who had this as required reading for classes, but as someone who makes a living form visual communication, I can vouch that this is a very valuable read.

This is the worst text book

By Mary Dickinson - December 1, 2012

This was convoluted and boring. It was so hard to read through the two writers writing style. You spent more time trying to understand the writer than the concept. I would not recommend this for any class.

Painful and rediculous as a textbook. The author, editor, and publisher fail.

By Mr. Pragmatic - May 7, 2010

I had this book for a visual communications class,as a required text,and was disgusted for the majority of the book. The first issue I have with it is that there are few color plates in the center of the book, and yet the author makes reference to color aspects of images that appear in color nowhere withing the main body of the text. Images are frequently referenced and placed on different spreads, and in a number of cases the text obviously had not been updated from the previous version, and the image referenced was in fact the wrong image. Images were of low resolution and in some cases too small to pick out the detain being discussed. For a book about "reading images" this was hardly a successful venture. At points in the text the author seems to have fallen and taken head trauma - as in this quote from pages 246 and 247 "The three 'possessive attributes' Epstein emphasizes are the Angel's long hair, his wings - and his balls." His balls? WTF mate? Loss of academic credibility... read more

AVAILABILITY
Merchant	Format	Price
Amazon US	Paperback	$35.81 - $49.95
eBooks.com	Digital (PDF)	$48.95
BookByte	Paperback	$86.15
eCampus	Paperback	~~$47.95~~ discount!