In the mid-1920s, Otto Neurath and his team developed the “Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics”. In political emigration (NL, UK), this became Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education). After Neurath’s death, at least four different lines of development continued this visual education work from 1945: his widow Marie Neurath was at the head of the Isotype Institute in England until 1971, and graphic artist Gerd Arntz continued the pictorial work in The Hague. Rudolf Modley, a former colleague and later rival of Neurath, made a successful career as an information designer in the USA. And finally, the Social and Economic Museum was reopened at its place of origin, Vienna.
The aim of the research project is to write the first comprehensive history of Isotype, in which the precursors and the interwar period in Vienna will be treated equally to the development in emigration (The Hague, Oxford), the international branches of the Viennese Museum, and the main lines of development after 1945 in England, the Netherlands, the USA, and Austria. In addition, the theoretical and programmatic dimension of Isotype will be systematically examined for the first time, and the question of the current importance of pictorial language will be addressed.
Publications
Bringing Happiness: Otto Neurath and the Debates on War Economy, Socialization and Social Economy
Friendship and Enstrangement. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Otto Neurath
Weltsprache ohne Worte: Rudolf Modley, Margaret Mead und das Glyphs-Projekt
Soft propaganda, special relationships, and a new democracy: Adprint and Isotype 1942–1948
Marie Reidemeister and Otto Neurath: interwoven lives and work
The Winding Road to Logical Empiricism. Philosophers of Science and the Youth Movement
Logical Empiricism, Life Reform, and the German Youth Movement
The Cult of the Genius and Its Critics: Edgar Zilsel and Otto Neurath
Lectures
Marie Reidemeister: pioneer of information design
Otto und Marie Neurath: Isotype 1925–1971
Isotype, Logischer Empirismus und Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung
Worte trennen – Bilder verbinden: Von der Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik zu Isotype
Isotype, Logical Empiricism and the Scientific World Conception
Journal
International planning for freedom
Weltsprache ohne Worte – Neuerscheinung
‘Isotype and beyond’ Symposium, 27 & 28 October 2021
Conference ‘Universal languages, artificial languages, planned languages’
‘History and present of Isotype’ at Wirtschaftsmuseum, Vienna
