How to Look: A Field Guide to Visual Culture (PDF, Second Edition)

For seventeen years we have written about art, architecture, design and photography, and the same words kept coming up. Chiaroscuro. Figure-ground. Provenance. This is the dictionary we wished someone had handed us, rebuilt from the ground up in September 2026.

One hundred and thirty-five terms, written to be read. Each definition carries an opinion about why the term matters and where you will meet it. A glossary that only defines is a list, and a list teaches nothing.

Twelve figures, drawn for this edition. Most glossaries explain chiaroscuro in words. This one draws it: one gold sphere, one light, a moss green shadow doing its job, and a moth that could not help itself. The vase that flips into two faces. The pointed arch beside the round one, with someone standing under it for scale. Each figure runs across two columns beside the term it belongs to, so you look first and read second.

Set like a proper reference book. Three columns to the page, running heads and folios, a drop letter opening every section, and a thumb index down the edge like a dictionary's. Instrument Serif for the voice, Montserrat for everything else, and every kind of term colored the way it is colored on mossandfog.com. It reads beautifully on a screen and prints cleanly on a home printer.

What you get

• 15 pages, US Letter
• 135 terms, A to Z, with pronunciations where they help
• 12 original figures in flat color
• A searchable PDF, bookmarked by letter, term and figure
• Yours to keep, print and reprint

The PDF arrives the moment you buy it. Nothing ships and nothing runs out.

A working reference for anyone who looks at things for a living, or wishes they did.