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ISOTYPE

RECOMMENDED READING

AND LINKS

 

INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF TYPOGRAPHIC PICTURE EDUCATION

 

The site you find here is to let you see more of the visual material as published of pictorial statistics as devised by Otto Neurath, the pioneer of visual language in the cause of communication, and continued after his death in 1945 by his wife Marie.

There is a large collection of the Neurath's work housed in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading.

I recommend Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas E. Uebel, Otto Neurath Philosophy between Science and Politics Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Frank Hartmann and Erwin Bauer, Bildwersprache, Otto Neurath Visualisienrungen, Wiener Universitatsverlag, Vienna 2002

See also R.D.Kinross, Otto Neurath's contribution to visual communication 1925 - 1945, MPhil dissertation, University of Reading, 1979


There are two excellent publications by the University of Reading but I recommend a really informative article in the rare publication FUTURE with an introduction by Paul Rotha written by Otto Neurath which gave a fascinating account of his development of the visual sense as a means of direct communication.


I have collected as many of the publications of the ISOTYPE Institute as possible including regular work for the FUTURE publication and also books for children on aspects of the World and its ways. I also attach one of Bob Godfrey’s inspired filmic reactions to the visual conventions of the ISOTYPE formula. I hope this will remind him of days at Madingley with Beryl.

 

 

 

LINKS


Understanding Non Verbal Communication Cues (thanks to Sarah Hill for this recommendation)

The Centre for Non Verbal Studies

University of Reading Library Isotype revisited

 

'...*two basic rules were formulated almost from the beginning of the Isotype movement . The first of these related to the presentation of statistics by means of pictures and held that a sign should be used to represent a certain number of things and a greater number of such signs a greater amount of things.. The second was a general rule that perspective should not be used." Michael Twyman, "The significance of Isotype', Graphic communication through Isotype, University of Reading 1975.
".Words make division, pictures make connections..." Otto Neurath, 'Museums of the Future', Survey Graphic, quoted in Graphic Communication above.