Isotype revisited
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Reading
Department Name: Typography and Graphic Communication
Abstract
This project is about the Isotype movement. Isotype (International System Of Typographic Picture Education) was a method for assembling, configuring, and disseminating information and statistics through pictorial means. It was known first as the Vienna Method, and was developed by Otto Neurath (and colleagues) in 1920s Vienna at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum where it assisted in explaining social and economic issues to the general public.
The work of the Isotype movement has played a major role in twentieth-century graphic design thinking. Otto Neurath is being increasingly identified as a key figure in twentieth-century design history, and so his activities and Isotype need re-evaluation. This project is concerned with Isotype in representative contexts. It aims to clarify better-known dimensions of Isotype, explore its less well-understood interests and innovations, and evaluate its legacy. It seeks, through comparative means, to make known the progress of Isotype and re-calibrate its significance to design history and information visualisation.
The work of the Isotype movement has played a major role in twentieth-century graphic design thinking. Otto Neurath is being increasingly identified as a key figure in twentieth-century design history, and so his activities and Isotype need re-evaluation. This project is concerned with Isotype in representative contexts. It aims to clarify better-known dimensions of Isotype, explore its less well-understood interests and innovations, and evaluate its legacy. It seeks, through comparative means, to make known the progress of Isotype and re-calibrate its significance to design history and information visualisation.
Organisations
Publications
Burke C
(2008)
Talking pictures
in Eye
Burke C
(2009)
Isotype representing social facts pictorially
in Information Design Journal
Burke C
(2009)
Isotype (picture language)
in Wikipedia
Neurath O
(2010)
From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography
Kindel E
(2010)
Isotype revisited
in Progetto grafico
Burke C
(2010)
Back to basics: Otto Neurath and Isotype
in Cambridge Literary Review
Kindel E
(2011)
Isotype revisited
in Progetto grafico international
| Title | If you could see inside, Children's books produced by isotype institute in the 1940's |
| Description | Exhibition, 9 January - 20 March 2009, curated by Sue Walker |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Impact | Public exhibition of artefacts relating to project research. |
| URL | http://isotyperevisited.org/2009/01/isotype-exhibitions-at-reading.html |
| Title | Isotype: international picture language |
| Description | Public exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 10 December 2010 - 13 March 2011, curated, designed, and produced by 'Isotype revisited', in collaboration with the V&A. Included 12 sections with associated section texts, and object labels and descriptive texts for approximately 153 original objects and 63 shown in reproduction. Sections included: 'Society and economy', 'Sociological graphics', 'Picturing Soviet progress', 'Around Rembrandt', 'Basic texts', 'Health, knowledge and modern man', 'War and the home front', Explaining a new society', 'Knowledge for young people', 'Isotype beyond the West', 'Before Isotype'. Exhibition accompanied by a free gallery guide with introduction and section texts, and representative images. Curated by C Burke, E Kindel, S Walker. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2010 |
| Impact | Exhibition at a national art and design museum; approximately 15,000 visitors to exhibition. |
| URL | http://isotyperevisited.org/exhibition/index.html |
| Title | The world in pictures: books and charts made with Isotype |
| Description | Public exhibition, 9 January - 31 March 2009, curated by Christopher Burke and Matthew Eve. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Impact | Public exhibition of artefacts relating to project research. |
| URL | http://isotyperevisited.org/2009/01/isotype-exhibitions-at-reading.html |
| Description | The overall aim of 'Isotype revisited' has been to consider Isotype in its representative contexts, to clarify its better-known dimensions, explore its less well-understood interests and innovations, and evaluate its legacy. In this aim the project has achieved significant advances and important results. Individual research. The first project objective, of 'tracking the changing dimensions and contexts of Isotype work', has structured its three research strands, and underpinned the research of individual project members. This research is presented in individual outputs, which are distributed across the strands. Collective research. An achievement of equal importance to project objectives is the collective presentation of project research. These 'composite' gatherings demonstrate Isotype activities and interests over time, and reveal their links. Achievements include: grouped papers, panels and a workshop (Networks of Design, Information Design Conference, St Bride lectures, 'Picturing social facts: on Neurath's visual language' workshop at the International Wittgenstein Symposium); the 'Neurath/Isotype' symposium; and the multiple-part article ('Isotype revisited' in Progetto grafico). Book 1, From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography. This project book, in its 'recovery' of the text and visual evidence of Otto Neurath's 'visual autobiography', demonstrates the sweep of Isotype's interest and influences, and addresses the second project objective to challenge 'the monolithic view of Isotype as concerned only with the design of pictorial statistics'. Exhibition, 'Isotype: international picture language'. The collective approach to project objectives was also achieved in 'Isotype: international picture language' at the V&A, London. The exhibition drew on research by all project members to inform its curatorial approach, which was to cover the breath of Isotype's activities and influences in 12 display sections. The exhibition balanced a research-intensive narrative with a presentation that was carefully gauged to a general audience. Over 92 days, the exhibition had an estimated 15,000 visitors. The exhibition was itself a case study of the Modern Movement, and enabled questions to be posed and conclusions reliably drawn about the significance of Otto Neurath and Isotype to 20th-century design history. Book 2, Isotype; design and contexts, 1925 to 1971. This book consists of a sequence of scholarly chapters that draw on the work of all project members and three collaborating scholars. It presents full and final statements on research areas, building on papers, articles, the first book, and the exhibition to achieve its over-arching treatment of Isotype. Its 554 pages and high-quality illustrations emphasize the research value and richness of the Isotype Collection. Symposium. This two-day event enabled the project to present its research to an important group of scholars with interests in Otto Neurath and Isotype. While advancing the aims and objectives of 'Isotype revisited', the symposium made a significant contribution to the coherence of this group, encouraging their interests and mutual support. Having built on a previous event in Vienna (April 2008), the symposium led to further gatherings in Austria (August 2010) and London (December 2010). The momentum of these meetings lead to further activities, exchange, and collaboration, including the book launch of Isotype: design and contexts, 1925 to 1971 (Vienna, January 2014) and the exhibition 'The Vienna Circle' (Vienna, May to October 2015). 'Isotype revisited' website (www.isotyperevisited.org). The project has been well documented though its website. The website has provided an accessible means of disseminating project developments, and for publishing documents, texts, and artefact analyses associated with research. The website has captured, recorded, and broadcast project interests and achievements, and continues to be a resource for scholars into the future. Importantly, it also provides a catalogue for the V&A exhibition. |
| Exploitation Route | 'Isotype revisited' has made advances in knowledge, in detail and 'in the round'. The project's areas of Vienna Method / Isotype research, and their varied channels of dissemination (non-academic and academic papers, articles and essays, two published books, a high-profile London exhibition, a project website, and so on) have moved the understanding of Isotype well beyond its circumscribed perception as consisting only of pictograms and pictorial statistics (crucial though these are). The project has deepened and broadened the reception Isotype, and has demonstrated Isotype's relevance to a wide range of scholars studying the history and practice of graphic communication and visual education, whether before, during or after the twentieth century. 'Isotype revisited' has also demonstrated or suggested value to those studying related spheres, including: the Modern Movement in inter-War Europe; links between graphic communication and philosophy, linguistics, and art history; developments in museum and curatorial practices in the twentieth century; the study and interpretation of archives; visual education in schools; the history of Soviet graphic communication, propaganda, and their links to the West; the history of documentary film techniques; the history of publishing for children; the role of graphic communication in the post-War reconstruction of Britain; the export of graphic communication in the non-Western world; and many more. The project's work has already, therefore, served scholars as a valuable source of relevant information and interpretation, and will continue to do so in future. Its work will also be of value to design practitioners involved in information visualization, and to design educators. 'Isotype revisited' has additionally demonstrated by example the advantages of archive-based research involving the close analysis of documents and artefacts, whether text or image, and the reconstruction of methods of designing. In its research outputs, 'Isotype revisited' has, in turn, demonstrated how archive-based research in graphic communication can be imaginatively assembled and richly presented. This can be seen in the project books, _From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography_ and _Isotype: design and contexts, 1925 to 1971_, and in the V&A exhibition. These outputs, editorially or curatorially, offer models of how graphic communication artefacts can be assembled, presented and explained in ways that are accessible, engaging, and intellectually robust. Given its close relationship to the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, 'Isotype revisited' has helped re-invigorate its use for research. Project outputs that have demonstrated the value of archive-based research (as above) have equally projected the character and content of the Isotype Collection outward into the research community. It has attracted regular visits from both research students and established scholars who recognise the collection's relevance to their own work and have drawn on it accordingly. We expect this to continue. And finally, while the project has been principally concerned with the historical dimensions of Isotype most immediately attractive to scholarly pursuits, it has also sought to bring its research into forums where historical understanding can ignite discussions of relevance to the present-day practice of graphic communication. In general, Isotype made importance advances in defining the nature and purpose of visual education, and through some four decades of activity, built up a considerable body of work demonstrating how it might be carried out. For this reason, it has attracted interest in a wide variety of areas where its example is still relevant. These include: publishing for children; the presentation of information to semi-literate and illiterate audiences; the presentation and dissemination of information on health, social welfare and enfranchisement, and so on. While its particular graphic forms may to some no longer seem contemporary (in style), the questions raised by Isotype work, and the answers provided by it, are of ongoing interest. It is hoped that work of the project has gone some way towards making these questions and answers more widely known. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://isotyperevisited.org/ |
| Description | Discussion in mainstream media - on television and on-line - make it abundantly clear that data visualization is of considerable popular interest, both as a method for presenting social, economic, and scientific information, and as a point of discussion for just how useful and reliable visual presentations of this kind. One might describe this as 'Information is beautiful' (pace McCandless), or the result of (for example) the ever-growing, multi-disciplinary visibility of Edward Tufte's work and publications on data presentation. Isotype fits squarely into this discussion, and is often given as a point of reference, having carried out pioneering work in the area. In the latter months of 2010 and the first several months of 2011, a variety of discussions took place among and for nonacademic audiences, indicating directly and indirectly that Isotype is part of this popular interest. These included television discussions on data visualization (e.g. BBC Newsnight, 9 August 2010), Isotype-related publications (_Gert Arntz_, with associated press coverage, December 2010; a special issue of _Eye_ magazine devoted to information design, Winter 2010), a conference on information design ('Design for understanding', London, 28 January 2011), articles about Isotype and Otto Neurath in the international print media (_International Herald Tribune_, _The New York Times_, _The Independent_, the _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_). These ran concurrently (or nearly so) with the publication of the project's book _From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography_ (September 2010), and the opening and run of the project's V&A exhibition (December 2010 to March 2011). Most of the above-mentioned discussions made reference to Isotype in general, and in some instances to project work. It may be stated, therefore, that the project has played a role in bringing Isotype and related topics to the general public during this period, and contributed to discussions of interest and value to non-academic audiences. In general, Isotype made importance advances in defining the nature and purpose of visual education, and through some four decades of activity, built up a considerable body of work demonstrating how it might be carried out. For this reason, it has attracted interest in a wide variety of areas where its example is still relevant. These might include: publishing for children; the presentation of information to semi-literate and illiterate audiences; the presentation and dissemination of information on health, social welfare and enfranchisement, and so on. While its particular graphic forms may to some no longer seem contemporary (in style), the questions raised by Isotype work, and the answers provided by it, are of ongoing interest. It is hoped that work of the project has gone some way towards making these questions and answers more widely known. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |