"Multimodal Discourse outlines a new theory of communication for the age of interactive multimedia. Over the years, our everyday life has exploded with a diversity of communicative modes - language, image, music, sound, texture and gesture. Where before one form of communication was used to express meaning, multimodality now surrounds us with a vast array of modes acting interactively and separately in order to 'speak' to us." "Drawing on a wide range of examples, Kress and Van Leeuwen outline an approach to social discourse in which colour plays a role equal to language, and show how two kinds of thought processes interact in the design and production of communicative messages: 'design thinking' and 'production thinking', the kind of thinking which occurs in direct interaction with the materials and media used. Above all the authors stress communicative practice and interactivity. Their question throughout is: how do people use communicative modes and media in actual, concrete, interactive instances of communicative practice?" "This book is a text for courses in language, media and communication willing to take on the theoretical challenges posed by multimodality, multimedia and multi-skilling, and it provides inspiring theoretical input for courses in interactive multimedia design."