Images are transforming the world.

Turn on the TV, go on the Web, open any publication, visit any public institution, make a phone call, or just step out into a busy street and it is easy to see that images are becoming more and more prominent in our daily experience.

But it is more than just the sheer number of them that is changing our lives. The newest imaging techniques in entertainment, communication, medicine, and the sciences have only upped the ante as we come to rely more and more on images to tell us what our world is like and even what we are like.

Understanding Images: A Introduction to Visuality is a textbook designed to explore and explain this vast new transformation.

This book includes chapters on how we see, the process of encountering an image, how the brain manages visual information, the meanings we derive from images, the visual impact of images, an analytical structure for understanding the image, and the role of culture, storytelling, and technology in the power of the image to excite, inform, coerce, and move us.

Clear explanations, illustrations and examples, and links to other online resources make the book a valuable tool for understanding this complex topic.

Understanding Images: A Introduction to Visuality is offered for free online as informational reading for anyone interested in understanding the new world of the image, but it is also structured for use in visual studies classes with a chapter-by-chapter approach that includes student assignments.

The author, Alan Robbins, is the Janet Estabrook Rogers Professor of Visual and Performing Arts (2006-2009) at Kean University in New Jersey where he teaches courses in graphic design and visual communications. He is also the founding director of The Design Center at Kean University, which has won many awards for its exhibitions, publications, and products in the various fields of design, and of The Center for the Image, a new initiative focusing on visual literacy. Professor Robbins is also the award-winning author of 20 books and a nationally known graphic artist. His work can be seen at the website www.alanrobbins.com.