Signature Gesture and Suppress Wild Innovation Or for Information and Wayfinding; Appearing, for Example, Individual Expression
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signature gesture and suppress wild innovation or for information and wayfinding; appearing, for example, individual expression. in Eskilson’s Graphic Design: A New History only as the But control, like originality, is notoriously inspiration for Otl Aicher’s 1972 Munich Olympics hard to achieve or enforce: the origami eagle that yet symbols, classics of the genre.2 And while it is probably hovers between the twin “A”s of the American Airlines true that iconic symbols are the most recognisable and logo was added by another design firm (that of Henry tangible products of the Isotype Institute, this method Dreyfuss) at the client’s request; the black bar that is such of visual communication was so much more. Hyphen a distinctive unifying element across the top of the New Press has now published two books on Neurath’s work, York subway signage system was apparently added by which will ensure that a wider view of what the Isotype the in-house sign manufacturers, who misread the speci- Institute produced can replace any narrow focus on fication drawings and took the mounting system at the shadowy symbols. These are the autobiographical works top for part of the graphic design. One can only imagine of Isotype’s leading figures, Otto and Marie Neurath. the resigned sighs, barely ruffling the lab coats and the Containing texts that were originally written in the 1940s designer suits, at a world that refuses to be entirely disci- and the 1980s, these two volumes now emerge thanks to plined and directed by reason and design. Perhaps we Reading University’s “Isotype Revisited” project. These still sigh with that longing. long-overdue accounts lay out the ambitions, processes, Design retains its uneasy relationship with the and thinking behind the Isotype method of pictorial vernacular, with the demands of consumer taste and education. global marketing. Today, the growth of the most heavily The first of these books is Marie Neurath’s and design-driven firms outpaces that of more traditional Robin Kinross’ The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype business models, such as manufacturing. Still, design Charts. The main part of the text is Marie Neurath’s 1986 resists growing over into a size and scale necessary to memoir, in which she relates her memories of working on match the biggest international businesses. It remains Isotopes from 1925 until she concluded the office in 1971. largely a highly labor-intensive service, difficult to What we now know as the Isotype project began in the mechanize entirely and unresponsive to massive gains 1920s when Otto Neurath formed the Gesellschafts- und in speed and efficiency. Like Unimark in its day, many Wirtschaftmuseum in Vienna, his process of shaping visual design firms today stay afloat more on the returns charts for popular education was then known as the from long hours, grinding working conditions and low “Vienna Method” (Wiener Methode). Later moving to The wages, rather than the value added from brilliant formal Hague and then to Oxford, the museum was renamed thinking. And like many design firms today, Unimark the Isotype Institute, standing for the International was somewhere in the middle, striving for a purity of System of Typographic Picture Education. Marie Neurath form and communication but buffeted by the realities (then Reidemeister) became a principle “transformer” of economics and popular desires. This book is itself an (Transformator), this being the professional title Neurath obvious labor of love and passion, driven by a powerful gave to someone who translated textual and statistical idealism, but in the end it suggests that the poetry of the data into visual information. In the Vienna Method, the future will arrive in its own time or not at all. transformer’s role was to interpret data, and to select from this an engaging focus or story (which could typically be expressed through comparative numerical Jesse O’Neill data, for example, measuring the number of inhabitants in regional cities versus major cities, and comparing 3 The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype Charts these across time and geographical location). From by Marie Neurath and Robin Kinross this data the transformer was then charged with the (Hyphen Press: London, 2009), ISBN 9780907259404, composition of a visual chart. The process of the Vienna 126 pages, illustrated, paperback ($25.00) Method cannot then be summarised as a universal procedure that would be identical for all information, From Hieroglyphics to Isotype: A Visual Autobiography instead it is about the intelligent and sympathetic trans- by Otto Neurath, edited by Matthew Eve lation of selected facts, through what Otto Neurath calls & Christopher Burke, (Hyphen Press: London, 2010), an eye-consciousness, a sophisticated awareness of the ISBN 9780907259442, 224 pages, illustrated, visual. The entire process was underpinned by Neurath’s hardcover ($50.00) positivist outlook, favoring tangible and measurable subject matter. Probably the most enduring legacy of Otto Neurath’s Marie Neurath’s memoir is combined in The Isotype Institute is the “shadow-world”1 it created of Transformer with separate articles on the categories silhouette people and objects, whose descendants we of Isotype work (written by Neurath and Kinross), commonly cross paths with in hospitals and interna- and the lessons to be learned from Isotype compo- tional airports. In graphic design history, Isotype is sition, which are examined within the context of other most readily adopted as a precursor to symbol design designers’ practices (written by Kinross). This does lead 106 DesignIssues: Volume 27, Number 4 Autumn 2011 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_r_00112 by guest on 24 September 2021 to something of fragmented narrative, which becomes story by describing the formation of the Gesellschafts- und tiring as the authors return the reader to the beginning of Wirtschaftmuseum. This final piece offers some closure to the story to readdress now familiar topics. But within this the account, but is really just an addition to the central disorder, the book reaches for something truly important, story of Neurath’s youth. a definition of what Isotype work was that expands well What is perhaps the most engaging feature beyond the commonly recognised “shadow-world” of of Neurath’s visual autobiography is the inquisitive silhouette men, and perhaps even an understanding excitement with which it reads. Neurath, who could be of what Isotype is, if we choose to see it as an attitude a forceful and formidable intellect, carries himself with towards information that can still be applied, and not as a childlike sense of wonder in telling his early discovery an attempt to emulate what is otherwise a period style. of a world of pictures, filling his scrapbooks, imagining Yes, Isotypes applied standardised picture elements, the lives of the ancients, and encountering frustration but they are less about the design of these symbols and when pictures aren’t clear enough to explain exactly how more about the development of a pictorial grammar. The something was done. Neurath tells us about the things he qualities of this grammar could be learned, and can be liked, including his admiration for map-makers, as well recognised in features such as quantified arrangement, as the things that frustrated him about pictures he found the removal of perspective, axial organisation, and the (even as a child, apparently), such as the imposition of compounding of symbols. Isotype ultimately aimed at the artist’s ego interrupting what should be the clarity picture education, the categories of the Neuraths’ works and correctness of educational drawings. and the lessons of their grammar all demonstrate this. The work aimed to be nothing comprehensive. The Transformer describes the processes and Christopher Burke calls it “refreshingly unconfessional;” work of this professional figure, but is the transformer it is simply a story of Neurath’s involvement with equivalent to a designer? Apparently Marie Neurath pictures and the lessons he learned from them. Burke’s wasn’t convinced of this, seeing design as too super- introduction provides some extra biographical infor- ficial to explain the work that she did. Where Neurath mation, introducing the influence of Neurath’s father, a may not have been convinced, it is clear that Kinross is. Viennese Jewish scholar, and describing the process of The lessons learned from Isotype that he follows through writing the visual autobiography. But this is not a full the practice of designers from Harry Beck to Max Bill picture of the young Neurath, just a story of the young and Anthony Froshaug don’t really show any direct Neurath’s love of pictures. An appendix includes repro- influence, but identify general attitudes to information ductions of the visual material Neurath collected, and that have led to comparable display techniques, showing the text is richly illustrated with picture examples of that while the Neuraths’ work was so original, they what he describes. In one instance the present editors weren’t necessarily working in isolation. The comparison demonstrate a direct connection from a picture Neurath with other designers has a clear historiographic motive. first saw as a child and one of the later Isotype charts; Drawing from the analysis of the Isotype Institute’s readers familiar with the work of the Isotype Institute formal techniques in this book, it places the Neuraths will undoubtedly recognise many more without these firmly within design discourse by creating similarities having to be pointed out. in product, whether they may have wanted it that way Otto Neurath may not use his ruminations to or not. establish the foundations of his Vienna Method, but Hyphen’s second book on the practices of Isotype those familiar with his work will recognise its origins in is Otto Neurath’s From Hieroglyphics to Isotype: A Visual what he writes.