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.
Author(s): Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen
Edition: 3
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 292
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of contents
Figures
Preface
Introduction: The grammar of visual design
A grammar of images?
A social semiotic theory of representation
Applications
Metafunctions
1 The semiotic landscape: Language and visual communication
The semiotic landscape
The ‘old’ and the ‘new’ visual literacy in books for the very young
An unconventional history of writing
Language and thought in the age of the new literacy
Multimodality and multidisciplinarity
2 Narrative representations: Designing signs of social action
Introduction
Participants
Processes
Action processes
Reactional processes
Speech processes and mental processes
Conversion structures
Vectors
Circumstances
Summary
Realizations
Visual structures and linguistic structures
3 Conceptual representations
: Designing social constructs
Classification
Realizations
Analytical structures
Assembled and unassembled analytical structures
Exhaustive and inclusive analytical structures
Temporal analytical structures
Topographical and topological processes
Summary
Realizations
Symbolic structures
Complexities
Verbal and visual conceptual structures
4 Representation and interaction: Designing the position of the viewer
The image act and the gaze
A brief interlude: image acts and speech acts – affordances of image and speech
Social distance
Perspective and the subjective image
Involvement and the horizontal angle
Power and vertical angle
Objective images
summary
Realizations
Two portraits and two children’s drawings
5 Modality and validity
: Designing models of reality
Modality, validity and a social theory of the real
Validity markers
Coding orientation
Validity in modern art
Validity configurations
Validity in the digital age
6 The meaning of composition
Composition and the multimodal text
Given and new: the information value of left and right
Ideal and real: the information value of Centre and margin
The information value of centre and periphery
Framing
Salience
summary
Realizations
The visual composition of interfaces
7 Materiality and meaning
Material production as a semiotic resource
Production systems and technology
Brushstrokes
The meaning of materiality
The semioticization of colour
The communicative functions of colour
A distinctive feature approach to the semiotics of colour
Value
Saturation
Purity
Modulation
Transparency
Luminosity
Differentiation
Hue
Home decoration: colour, character and fashion
8 The third dimension
The third dimension: reading and using
Interactive viewing
Validity in three dimensions
Composition in three dimensions
The moving image
Bibliography
Index
