Isotype

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Pages from a book by Otto Neurath (1937)

The isotype was originally developed as a Viennese method of image statistics in the years from 1925 onwards by the Austrian people and workers' educator Otto Neurath and his team at the Vienna Museum of Society and Economy . It is (since 1934) as an acronym for I nternational S ystem o f Ty pographic P icture E ducation (German: International System pictorial education).

Origin and development

Image pedagogy was developed as a system with a lexicon of pictograms and a grammar (rules for combining the pictograms). It should also be able to provide access to education for those who were previously denied the educational forms of education, who had no or only limited access to the written language and thus lacked a basic cultural technique with which they would have knowledge bases themselves can acquire.

This is why image pedagogy (which is not traditionally passed on to educated people) should not be based on a cultural technique, but on an anthropological constant, the ability to associate . It should break down inhibitions and cognitively activate the viewer in order to ultimately convey economic knowledge in an efficient, neutral and scientifically correct manner.

In this respect, image pedagogy is derived from Otto Neurath's concept of education and implements the educational ideals formulated there in a graphic form.

Even if Neurath, together with Marie Reidemeister , later Neurath, and Gerd Arntz , mainly dealt with the development of the conveying images, the construction rules should also be transferable to other visual media such as models or cartoons . Neurath tried his hand at films (see Works) and tried to apply the isotype rules to language with his team (see International Picture Language). The isotype therefore stands for a comprehensive, practiced concept of method that goes beyond the often cited images.

Stages of development

Because the specific questions of implementation proved difficult in the practice-immanent development process of the isotype, the early communication images differed greatly from the later ones. The isotype was used on display boards, in publications, on flyers and as a combination of text and images. In the end, images of communication emerged that were made up of individual symbols combined with one another according to certain rules. They were largely designed without written language, followed the requirement of high standardization and were reduced to the simplest schemes.

The educational image publications reveal various stages of development of the isotype: If the colorful world still shows various inconsistencies that do not always correspond to the rules formulated, the GWM has presented a relatively closed communication system with the publication Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft 1930, which allows for safe control of the visual educational craft shows. With the folder Technology and Mankind published in 1932, image education became more systematic and experimented with the presentation of more complex statements. The book Modern man in the making from 1939, on the other hand, did not experiment with content-related complexity, but tried a more abstract method of representation and thus sounded out the scope of the isotype.

didactics

Statistics with isotypes on the final dike

Didactically , the social science presentations were supplemented by health-related topics as early as 1927, and later by art history, history and natural sciences.

target group

Image pedagogical practice has also changed with regard to the addressee: If the development idea was primarily due to the methodological need that emerged in the context of workers' education , Neurath quickly recognized its transferability to other addressees, and expanded the experiments with it to certain Viennese schools and in 1929 published the first children's book, Die Bunte Welt . Accordingly, the museum and publication-related use of the isotype was by no means necessarily linked to the workforce, so that the isotype shifted its focus: It was and increasingly became a means of global-social communication.

structure

If the Viennese method was to be scientific, efficient and stimulating, it was specifically determined by three requirements: It avoided written language as much as possible. In terms of a high level of standardization, she implemented lexical and grammatical rules that clearly assigned what is to be represented and what is represented. In addition, she reduced complex figures and factual structures to their essential elements and schemes.

These basic figures of visuality, systematisation and reduction were worked out on the basis of conveying images, which ultimately combined signs with one another in such a way that complex, scientific facts could be represented.

Web links

Commons : Isotype  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Works

Publications (selection)

  • Society and Economic Museum Vienna: The colorful world. Arthur Wolf Verlag, Vienna 1929.
  • Society and Economy Museum Vienna: Society and Economy. Image statistical elementary work. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1930.
  • Society and Economic Museum Vienna: Technology and Humanity. 3 booklets. German publishing house for youth and people, Vienna / Leipzig 1932.
  • Otto Neurath: International Picture Language. Kegan Paul, London 1936.
  • Otto Neurath: Basic by Isotype. Kegan Paul, London 1937.
  • Otto Neurath: Modern man in the making. Alfred Knopf, New York / London 1939.
  • KB Smellie: America and Britain. Our two democracies at work. George G. Harrap & Co., London / Toronto / Bombay / Sydney 1944.

Movies

  • Blood transfusion (Paul Rotha) 1941
  • A few ounces a day (Paul Rotha) 1941
  • Defeat diphteria (Paul Rotha) 1941
  • Worker and warfront (Paul Rotha) 1942–46
  • Defeat tuberculosis (Paul Rotha) 1944
  • World of plenty (Paul Rotha) 1945
  • Land of promise (Paul Rotha) 1946

literature

  • Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy of Otto Neurath. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. (= Publications of the Wiener Kreis Institute ). Springer, Heidelberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-319-16315-4 .
  • Christopher Burke, Eric Kindel, Sue Walker (Eds.): Isotype. Design and contexts . Hyphen Press, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-907259-47-3 .
  • Robin Kinross: The graphic formation of Isotype. 1925-40. In: Christopher Burke, Eric Kindel, Sue Walker (Eds.): Isotype. Design and contexts. 1925-71. Hyphen Press, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-907259-47-3 , pp. 107-177.
  • Karl H. Müller: Symbols Statistics Computer Design. Otto Neurath's image pedagogy in the computer age. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-209-00864-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 56ff.
  2. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, pp. 268f.
  3. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 91ff.
  4. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 78ff.
  5. ^ Otto Neurath: Health education through isotypes. (1945). In: Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (Hrsg.): Collected Bildpädagogische Schriften. Vienna 1991, p. 632.
  6. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 212ff.
  7. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 146f.
  8. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, pp. 162f.
  9. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 172f.
  10. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, pp. 202f.
  11. ^ Robin Kinross: The graphic formation of Isotype. 1925-40. In: Christopher Burke, Eric Kindel, Sue Walker (Eds.): Isotype. Design and contexts. 1925-71. Hyphen Press, London 2013, pp. 107-177.
  12. ↑ Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (ed.): Collected Bildpädagogische Schriften. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 1991.
  13. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 269ff.
  14. ^ Otto Neurath: Society and Economic Museum in Vienna. In: Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (Hrsg.): Collected Bildpädagogische Schriften. Vienna 1991 1925, p. 2.
  15. ^ Otto Neurath: Isotype Institute and Adult Education. (1942). In: Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (Hrsg.): Collected Bildpädagogische Schriften. Vienna 1991, p. 591.
  16. ↑ Otto Neurath: Isotype and the graphic. (1935). In: Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (Hrsg.): Collected Bildpädagogische Schriften. Vienna 1991, p. 343.
  17. ↑ Angelique Groß: The picture pedagogy Otto Neuraths. Methodical principles of the presentation of knowledge. Springer, Heidelberg 2015, p. 236ff.