Isotype: Origin, development, and legacy

Otto Neurath (18821945), a man well known at his time as an economist, philosopher of science, and as a political writer, became director of the Social and Economic Museum and invented what he called the Vienna Method of Picture Statistics. Its historical and political context was Red Vienna (19191933) an experiment of communal socialism in which education (beside health, housing policies, social administration etc.) played a major role. Neuraths picture statistics is distinguished by its educational purpose (civic education, democratization of knowledge, empowerment etc.) as well as by its particular design rules: According to Isotype, a sign represents a certain amount of things and a greater number of such signs represents a greater amount of things. The Vienna method and its pictograms were further developed and visually refined by a team, the most important members of which were beside Neurath himself the artist Gerd Arntz (1900 1988) and Marie Reidemeister (1898 1986) as the transformer, a prototype of the modern graphic designer, who translated numbers and facts into visual form. When democracy ended in Austria in 1933/34, and the socialist movement was violently defeated, Neurath and his core team escaped to the Netherlands and to England in May 1940. The Vienna Method was renamed in 1935 as Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education). An Isotype Institute was founded in Oxford in 1942. After the end of World War II Otto Neurath died on 22 December 1945. There were at least four different mainlines of developments more or less closely related to Isotype that continued mostly independently of each other from 1945 onwards. Firstly, Marie Neurath continued to apply the visual education method more or less strictly in the vein of her previous collaboration with Otto Neurath and remained head of the Isotype-Institute until 1971. Secondly, there was the development in The Hague, where Gerd Arntz had stayed in 1940. He continued with pictorial work with a Dutch Foundation. Thirdly, there was the development in the USA, where Otto Neuraths former collaborator (and later rival) Rudolf Modley (1906 1976) cut his own path as a successful information designer and entrepreneur. Finally, after the end of fascism and National Socialism, the Social and Economic Museum was re-opened in its birthplace in Vienna and exists until today. The research project aims to analyze the origin and developments of Isotype and Isotype-like approaches in different political contexts and national cultures. It will result in the first comprehensive history of Isotype, including its precedents, its core history in Vienna, its development in exile (The Hague, Oxford), its different international branches and its mainlines of different but parallel developments after 1945. Additionally, it examines the theoretical and programmatic dimension of Isotype and based upon this historical investigation, however, it raises the question of its (even potential) relevance today.

In the research project Isotype: Origin, Development, Legacy, project leader Günther Sandner and his colleague Christopher Burke investigated the history of a visual education project that began in Vienna in the 1920s. Together with an interdisciplinary team, the sociologist and economist Otto Neurath developed the "Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics". It was primarily used in workers' education and in schools. Marie Reidemeister and Gerd Arntz were among the most important members of the group working in the field of visual education. The end of the parliamentary republic and the establishment of an authoritarian, dictatorial regime signalled the end of visual education work in Red Vienna. From 1934 to 1940 in The Hague in the Netherlands and from 1941 to 1945 in Oxford in England, the work was continued under the new name International System Of TYpographic Picture Education (ISOTYPE). The research project focussed not only on a detailed analysis of the origins and development of the first two decades, but above all on the history of ISOTYPE after 1945, which was previously only partially known. The expulsion of many of the staff, but also the end of the war and fascism and the death of Otto Neurath at the end of 1945 resulted in a new situation: while there was a lack of sufficiently qualified people in the country of origin, Austria, there was no longer a joint project between those who continued the work in other countries. While Marie Neurath wanted to work in the spirit of her late husband Otto Neurath and found independent ways of linking this work with new challenges (e.g. educational and information campaigns in West Africa in the 1950s), Gerd Arntz continued his graphic work within the framework of a Dutch foundation. In the USA, on the other hand, Rudolf Modley had been successfully endeavouring to develop an independent version of ISOTYPE since the 1930s, which he felt was better suited to American conditions. And in the very city where ISOTYPE had originated as a Viennese method, the work was increasingly moving away from its origins. In the 1960s and 1970s, the lines of connection were severed: Gerd Arntz ended his visual educational work in 1968 and the ISOTYPE Institute in England closed its doors in 1971, although Marie Neurath continued to talk about the history of ISOTYPE until her death. Rudolf Modley eventually died in the USA in 1976. Finally, the project analysed the question of what the legacy of ISOTYPE might be today. The essential characteristics of the method were worked out and current projects in visual education and information graphics were presented as examples, which today are linked to the idea and method of ISOTYPE.