Let’s say you make cat posters, and you want to sell them online. You can create a website, but you need to host it online so people can access it. A server hosts the code that lets customers select which cat poster they want, and then buy it. Another server hosts the database of your inventory, which tells you which posters are available to purchase, and it also hosts the image files to show customers pictures of the posters.

Now imagine your posters go viral online, and are incredibly popular. Everyone is interested in going to your website — and that means you need more servers to keep your website up and running. And that server can’t be on your computer, because imagine what happens if you have a power outage, or your computer crashes?

That’s where the cloud comes in — hosting your website on the cloud lets you just focus on the cat posters. But for someone who’s not an engineer, this stuff can get confusing.

I’m a senior developer advocate at Google Cloud, and I’m also an artist. As part of my job at Google, I constantly learn new things and find new ways to share that information with other developers in the community. I’ve learned the power of visual storytelling from my art, and I recently decided to pair up my two skill sets to help explain exactly what the cloud is in a new book, “Visualizing Google Cloud.”

Though my book, which is available for preorder, is aimed at cloud engineers and architects, there are a few lessons that anyone could find useful. For example: What is Cloud? How does it work? Why do you need storage? What is a database and what are the different types? How do you build apps? How do you analyze data? My goal with this book is to give you a visual learning path to all things cloud. And my goal is also to contribute to a good cause; part of the books’ proceeds go directly to a charity that fights malnutrition and supports the right to education.