Oller and Giardetti provide a simple, comprehensive, and fully consistent theory to explain why some messages and images communicate more effectively than others -- and then show specialists in advertising, marketing, and high stake communications how to apply the theory in their work. With examples and illustrations that practitioners and academics alike will find understandable, they provide readers with a solid grounding in semiotics, the study of how meanings are constructed and construed in signs. In doing so Oller and Giardetti help high stakes communicators find new ways to reach and persuade others -- but speak against deceit and subterfuge. They make clear that messages must be consistent with the facts, and that the most successful communicators share one special trait: integrity. A readable, research-based, up-to-date treatment of an important emerging field of study, and a carefully developed guide for practitioners and academics alike.

"Images That Work" is about emotions, desires, ideas, and the hard objects, events, and tensional relations in the common world of space and time. It is about creating and presenting words and pictures in ways that communicate genuine substance from real people to other real people. Oller and Giardetti begin with the foundations of integrity, the glory of supreme effort, and the weaknesses of fads, fashions, and untested gut feelings. They draw examples from high stakes messages in advertising, entertainment, and other communications industries. In doing so they make clear that not only are effective messages consistent with material facts, they are also comprehensive in how they convey facts and yet concise and simple enough to fit into the time and space that consumers will devote to the message. And along the way they give readers a solid grounding in the fascinating and relatively new field of semiotics, a field that has already become well established in the academic community and which has begun to spread its influence to the world outside.

Watch the excitement ripple through your classroom as students use their intellect to find out who committed the "crime" at your school. Enliven your students as they practice critical thinking skills. Students are often taught skills such as the scientific method, scientific research, critical thinking, making observations, analyzing facts, and drawing conclusions in isolation. Studying forensic science allows students to practice these skills and see theories put into practice by using circumstances that model real-life events, meanwhile letting students explore a variety of career options. This exciting unit includes: background information on forensics, exploration of careers in forensic science and law enforcement, a simulation involving a fire in the school library, and instructions for writing your own crime scene simulation. To crack the case, students examine evidence left at the scene, interview suspects (staff members), and use critical thinking to connect all of the clues and eliminate suspects. Students will feel like real investigators with this true-to-life simulation. Let your students solve more mysteries with Mystery Disease, Mystery Science, Detective Club, and The Great Chocolate Caper. Grades 5-8