Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
ISOTYPEs by Otto Neurath representing different groups of people, c. 1945. Otto & Marie
Neurath Isotype Collection, University of Reading.
ISOTYPEs
ISOTYPEs (short for International System of Typographic Picture Education) are
an attempt to communicate information pictographically, through a standard visual
language. They were created by Vienna-born political economist Otto Neurath
(1882-1945) between the 1920s and 1940s. Following the First World War
(1914-1918), Neurath felt it was vital to communicate important social and economic
issues clearly. He believed that information should be comprehensible to all people,
no matter their cultural or educational background. He is quoted as saying 'words
make divisions, pictures make connections'.
A system of elementary pictographs was developed, completely void of decoration,
in order to present complicated data visually. The pictographs were designed to rep-
resent subtle qualities within the data, and challenges such as how to represent an
emigrant or an unemployed man through a pictograph had to be overcome. Along
with scientist and mathematician Marie Reidermeister (later his wife), Neurath con-
verted data from verbal and numerical form into visual layouts. Inspired by the artist-
ic movement of Constructivism and the avant-garde New Typography movement of
the 1920s and 1930s, German artist Gerd Arntz (1900-1988) designed most of these
pictographs; by 1940 there were more than 1,000. Simplicity was the key: a strict set
of rules governed the pictographs to ensure they were consistent in their make-up and
application. These specified the use of text, colour and positioning.
Neurath's work had an enormous impact on information design. The conventions and
simplified visual imagery he produced helped to develop a universal visual language
that can still be seen in the use of pictographs in signage and information systems
worldwide.
