Between the two world wars, Germany because a cultural hub. Style of graphic design was influenced by cubism. It eventually evolved into an Art Deco Moderne Style. Graphic design made a dramatic transition form older styles into a style we would recognize as modern.
Art Deco Moderne expressed the designs of a modern era and passion for geometric decoration for a machine age. It's an internationally popular style that evolved at that time that signifies a major change in aesthetic sensibility in graphic design, architectursal, and product design.
Some important designers of this time were Edward Kauffer, AM Cassandre, Jean Carlo, and Joseph Kinder. All of them incorporated cubism into their work.
Ludwig Hohlwien was a great illustrator who was commissioned by the Nazi party to create propaganda posters.
Graphic Design of this time was very propagandistic and promoted nationality, distrust of enemies, and paranoia of spies. Chagne in attitude of the propaganda also accompanied the changes in style. An example of this is the Montgomery FLag 1944 WWII poster that promoted patriotism and anti Japanese sentiment. Uncle Sam turned from just patriotic, to angry.
Maholy Nagy used photoplastic technique and showed micro and macro elements. (micro - a close up view of a face collaged with macro elements, such as a view of an entire crowd.)
Herbert Matter pioneered new graphic design techniques by integrating black and white photography with signs and areas of color. His influences affected later practioners of the International and Typographic Styles. Matter's Posters are considered masterpieces of the 20th century.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was a very influential school of the early 19th century. It established design as a discipline taught and practiced using Modernism's form and functionality. It was located in Weimar from 1919-1925 and in Dessau in 1925-1933 and in Dessau from 1925-1933. the bauhaus was organized with a system that involved a master, journeyman, and apprentice. This system was similar to philosophies and lines used by builders of medieval Gothic cathedrals.
important influential individuals:
Herbert Bayer- At Dessau
His innovations:
*used an implied grid system and system for sizes and type rules and pictorial images to create an open composition.
*strong verticals and horizontals with occasional diagonals.
*he almost exclusively used san serif.
*experimented with type - designed a "visual alphabet" in 1925 that emitted capitals.
Moholy-Nagy
*Photoplasitcs - expanded role of photography in design context. he created a new visual language for photograph in enlargement, distortion, dropouts, double exposure, and montage.
Jan Tschichold
Unique in the history of design.
*fully realized bauhaus typographic theories. 20th century typographic expression is based on these theories.
*after realizing bauhaus typographic theories, he rejects dictums and reverted to a classical form of type.
*advocates freedom of modernist dogma.
*He wrote a book called "The New Typography" - described funtional design in the most straightforward means.
- the New Typography advocates design of contrasting elements, dynamic forces (type in motion), white space as interval and structural element, declared sans serif the modernist type.
* Tschichold turned back to "traditions of type" like his re-interpretation of Garamound, which he called Sabon. Returning "traditions of type" implied freedom of thought and artistic expression in typographic design.
Dutch masters of the New Typography
*Piet Zwart - self-proclaimed "typotekt" (architect + typography). He was influenced by Dada and De Stijl's functionalism.
*Paul Soetema
*Hendrick N Wekman - used small presses to produce a unique composition. his techniques were innovative and new.
*Herbert Matter - expressed type and image more fully than any other designer in the 1930s. He understood Russian film innovations, and used montage and collage.
his Significance: the role of extreme contrasts of scale in photography was expanded in the European poster style.
(Btw, sorry I missed class today. I'm sure you noticed that when I came in. Just so you know, that was the only class I missed. I don't habitiually try to skip class without being noticed. I just got thrown off a little since my class before your class got out an hour early, so then I came at 6 instead of 7 and saw no one was there, so I though class might have been canceled or something until later when I noticed what time it was and remembered I got out early. I didn't missed it on purpose.)
important influential individuals:
Herbert Bayer- At Dessau
His innovations:
*used an implied grid system and system for sizes and type rules and pictorial images to create an open composition.
*strong verticals and horizontals with occasional diagonals.
*he almost exclusively used san serif.
*experimented with type - designed a "visual alphabet" in 1925 that emitted capitals.
Moholy-Nagy
*Photoplasitcs - expanded role of photography in design context. he created a new visual language for photograph in enlargement, distortion, dropouts, double exposure, and montage.
Jan Tschichold
Unique in the history of design.
*fully realized bauhaus typographic theories. 20th century typographic expression is based on these theories.
*after realizing bauhaus typographic theories, he rejects dictums and reverted to a classical form of type.
*advocates freedom of modernist dogma.
*He wrote a book called "The New Typography" - described funtional design in the most straightforward means.
- the New Typography advocates design of contrasting elements, dynamic forces (type in motion), white space as interval and structural element, declared sans serif the modernist type.
* Tschichold turned back to "traditions of type" like his re-interpretation of Garamound, which he called Sabon. Returning "traditions of type" implied freedom of thought and artistic expression in typographic design.
Dutch masters of the New Typography
*Piet Zwart - self-proclaimed "typotekt" (architect + typography). He was influenced by Dada and De Stijl's functionalism.
*Paul Soetema
*Hendrick N Wekman - used small presses to produce a unique composition. his techniques were innovative and new.
*Herbert Matter - expressed type and image more fully than any other designer in the 1930s. He understood Russian film innovations, and used montage and collage.
his Significance: the role of extreme contrasts of scale in photography was expanded in the European poster style.
(Btw, sorry I missed class today. I'm sure you noticed that when I came in. Just so you know, that was the only class I missed. I don't habitiually try to skip class without being noticed. I just got thrown off a little since my class before your class got out an hour early, so then I came at 6 instead of 7 and saw no one was there, so I though class might have been canceled or something until later when I noticed what time it was and remembered I got out early. I didn't missed it on purpose.)
Monday, March 2, 2009
One Minute Essay: The Influence of Graphics Design of Socialist Russia
Graphics Design in communist Russia sparked many new innovative techniques and styles that continue to influence graphics design today.
Influences of Russian Communist graphics design in the 20th century caused photos to become discussive. Constructivism also emerged in Communist Russia in the early 20th century. The graphics of the time, place, and political setting used hyperbole messages for the leninstate and also had the style of pureflat color - they had machine like spatial rhythms. Communist art and design expressed equality for all people, including women. Through advertisement, the graphic system of Communist Russia developed a standardized format closely intertwined with the economy.
Some of the important and influential designers discussed in class were Solomon Tellingster, the Steinberg Brothers, Rodchenko, and El Lissitzky. Solomon Tellingster created Exercise and Sports posters which combined text and image to serve the media.
The Steinberg Brothers merged phototgraphy with illustration. This technique was new and influenced the development of the usage of photomontage and montage. Rodchenko was an advertising constructor whose designs were like a missing link between older and modern packaging design.
El Lissitzky was a visionary designer of the 20th century. He invented Prouns Space, which is a synthesis of architectural concepts with painting. He is known for symbolic constructivist propaganda posters such as, "Beat the whites with the Red Wedge" and his childrens book "Of Two Squares", which could be understood by everyone, including illiterate peasants. El Lissiztsky's work displayed cinematic power of macro/micro, split images, repeating patterns, and dynamic crops. Lissitzky also was involved with the creation and publication with one of the most influential books on graphics design of the 20th century. It's called "The "Isms" of Art". It established typographic standar, pictorial spreads, elevation of numbers to concreate abstract forms, and asymmetrical balance. He used white space and silhouette halftones to create the illusion of 3D with 2D shapes. His influential posters were icons of the 20th century and explored montage, photomontage, and displayed socialist ideals of equality between genders.
Influences of Russian Communist graphics design in the 20th century caused photos to become discussive. Constructivism also emerged in Communist Russia in the early 20th century. The graphics of the time, place, and political setting used hyperbole messages for the leninstate and also had the style of pureflat color - they had machine like spatial rhythms. Communist art and design expressed equality for all people, including women. Through advertisement, the graphic system of Communist Russia developed a standardized format closely intertwined with the economy.
Some of the important and influential designers discussed in class were Solomon Tellingster, the Steinberg Brothers, Rodchenko, and El Lissitzky. Solomon Tellingster created Exercise and Sports posters which combined text and image to serve the media.
The Steinberg Brothers merged phototgraphy with illustration. This technique was new and influenced the development of the usage of photomontage and montage. Rodchenko was an advertising constructor whose designs were like a missing link between older and modern packaging design.
El Lissitzky was a visionary designer of the 20th century. He invented Prouns Space, which is a synthesis of architectural concepts with painting. He is known for symbolic constructivist propaganda posters such as, "Beat the whites with the Red Wedge" and his childrens book "Of Two Squares", which could be understood by everyone, including illiterate peasants. El Lissiztsky's work displayed cinematic power of macro/micro, split images, repeating patterns, and dynamic crops. Lissitzky also was involved with the creation and publication with one of the most influential books on graphics design of the 20th century. It's called "The "Isms" of Art". It established typographic standar, pictorial spreads, elevation of numbers to concreate abstract forms, and asymmetrical balance. He used white space and silhouette halftones to create the illusion of 3D with 2D shapes. His influential posters were icons of the 20th century and explored montage, photomontage, and displayed socialist ideals of equality between genders.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Discourse 1 - Isotypes - Images
The logo for Shell uses reduction to simplify the design so it's generic. Since the logo is generic, it's apparent that it doesn't only refer to one specific shell in the world. It just represents shells in general. It's iconic, easily recognized, and can be recognized by anyone from any culture. This is how Neurath's ideas have influenced the development of modern graphics design and how the logos of companies have been shaped by the influence of ideas about simplicity and universality. The image of the shell logo came from Carlo Bejec's portfolio.
These next two images represent statistical information in graphic form instead of long lists of numbers that would bore, confuse, and lose the attention of anyone intended to see them. The map of China represents the birth places of Poets. Large red dots indicate places where lots of poets were born and small dots represent places where few poets were born. It's much easier, faster, and more interesting to viewers to be able to see this information graphically than long lists of numbers. The map of China came from "Envisioning Information" by Edward R Trufte.
The same principles are used in the chart below the map, which displays statistical information about the number of cars and phones in different European countries. Each image is a unit representing a certain amount of cars, phones, or people. Since the graphics representing cars, phones, and people apply the principle of reduction, they are to simple to represent a specific object. They represent any one of that type of object on the planet. It is generalized, like the shell logo. I mentioned in the bulleted information about the Isotype article I read that the size of the graphics are not meant to be interpreted literally. The phones do not represent giant phones the size of cars and the cars do not represent anything smaller than usual. The graph came from the "Reading Isotype" article by Ellen Lupton.
Since images are universal, they can be read by anyone of any culture who speaks any language. This can be useful for information intended for the general public because not everyone in the general public is necessarily from the same culture or speaks the same language. This can be especially vital and important to traffic signs, where lives could be in danger if people didn't understand them. This is why many traffic signs use isotype to convey messages, like signs warning of pedestrians, or signs displaying graphical information about the way a road turns. Below, there are some examples of signs using isotype to explain information about directing aircrafts. The image of the airtraffic control signs came from "Envisioning Information" by Edward R. Trufte.
Discourse 1 - Isotypes - Bulleted Information From Article
Bulleted Information on Discourse 1 - Isotype
This information is from the "Reading Isotype" article by Ellen Lupton
Otto Neurath - Isotypes were developed by philosopher and social scientist Otto Neurath in the 1920s.
• Conveyed social and economic information to a general public by using simplified images. It has been applied to sociological museums, books, posters, and pedagogical materials.
• Neurath’s philosophy included the belief that language is the medium of all knowledge. Symbols are essential for the availability of empirical facts to the mind. Knowledge and its structure are disfigured b y verbal language because its vocabulary is an inconsistent not a logical mode of objects and relations in the physical world.
• Pictorial signs are the universal bride between symbolic, generic language and direct empirical evidence because vision is the link between language and nature.
• Otto Neurath and his wife directed the Isotype Institute.
o Isotype researchers gathered statistics and other information
o Symbol designers developed Isotype vocabulary
o “Transformers” converted information into Isotype graphics.
Logical Positivism – Logical Positivism is a philosophical theory formed in 1920s and 1930s by a group of philosophers called the “Vienna Circle.”
• Brought together 2 contradictory philosophies:
o Rationalism – uses logic, geometry, and mathematics to study reality instead of observation.
o Empiricism (AKA Positivism) – claims knowledge is only accessible through direct human observation.
• Rationalism and empiricism is combined in science by transforming mathematics from metaphysics to method from autonomous system reflecting divine law or the inherent order of mind to a tool for quantifying observable phenomenon
• Philosophy continued the opposition between rationalist and empiricist theories of knowledge.
Symbolic Logic – Giuseppe Peano and Gottlob Frege developed symbolic logic in the late 19th century.
• Utilizes basic relationships similar to arithmetic, such as +, -, x, =.
• Simple propositions are formed from precise definitions. Complex statements can be built from the simple propositions that are formed.
• Analytical truth makes no claim to metaphysical reality, referring to a relationship among abstract symbols.
• The Vienna Circle used symbolic language to analyze language into a minimum set of direct experiences, represented algebraically.
• The terms in every language can be reduced to a core of physical observations, such as “big, “small”, “red”, “blue.”
• Logical positivism aims o identify basic observational terns underlying all languages.
• “Mirror of Nature” – logical positivism correlated the terms of a purely abstract system with units of direct experience, attempting to analyze language into a consistent and logical mirror of nature.
Linguistic theory was developed by Ferdinand deSaussure in the late 19th century.
• Logical positivism contrasted with linguistic theory because in linguistic theory, language is fundamentally independent of any structure of nature, but in logical positivism, the meaning of any term in language is derived from structures in nature.
• Signs derive their significance from their relationship to other signs, not from correspondence with material objects (Example: I also means not you, not he, not she, etc). The sign itself is empty and meaningless.
• Some branches of the artistic avante garde were influenced by Sausserian linguistics, but positivist tradition has influenced modern design disciplines more.
Isotype – popular version of logical positivism
• Positive because as a picture, it claims a base in observation
• Logical because it concentrates experience detail into a schematic repeatable sign
• Isotype aids are comparable with scientifically formulated statements. Scientists reach theories from the observational statements. Neurath’s theories correlate with observational statements, but are distinguishable from them.
• Isotype characters are similar to scientific formulas
• Isotype symbols are reduced and conventionalized schemes of direct experience.
• Neurath considered pictures a very neutral and therefore superior mode of expression. “Just through its neutrality, and its independence of separate languages, visual education is superior to word education.
• Pictorial information would dissolve cultural differences because of its universality. Pictures can be understood more easily by anyone in any culture because language is not necessary to understand a picture.
• Since the photograph is a mechanical record of optical data, it is the most neutral of all.
• Tried to combine the mechanical empiricism
• Isofarms are pictograms with generic status indicated by style, which shows that it is public information and not an advertisement or decoration.
• Constructivists (Theorists were destil and the Bauhaus) – geometry could synthesize art and technology and offer a “visual language” that could exist independently of particular cultures. Their goal was to create a visual language that could be used in many cultures.
Pictorial Statistics
• Robin Kinross noted the influence of Isotypes could be broken loosely into 2 areas.
• Only quantitative facts are socially significant.
• Since most people are afraid of banal details of large amounts quantitative information as rows of figures, simple, clean, colored, symbols (Example: simplified men, women, employees) were used to represent quantitative information instead of abstract numbers.
• Isotype semiotic terminology – Isotype figures are both icons and indexes.
• Icon – a sign whose form is analogous to the object it represents. As an icon, it’s grounded by physical resemblance.
• Index – a sign linked to its object by virtue of proximity or direct physical contact. As an index, it’s generated by numerical data.
• Statistical tabulation is an index of empirical observations. Example: a population curve is a shape produced by information it describes, not an invented image.
• Statistics promote the objectivity of numbers while pressing and interest in explanation.
Pictorial signs
• Neurath’s writing suggests 2 central rules of generating vocabulary of international pictures:
o Reduction – for determining the style of individual signs
o Consistency – for giving a group of signs the appearance of a coherent system.
• These rules have implicit (practical functions).
• They also have explicitly (rhetorical functions).
• These constructive rules project empirical scientific objectivity
• They reinforce the “language quality” of picture signs because individual signs look more like letters and groups of signs look like complete, sufficient languages.
• Reduction – to find the simplest way to express an object
• Implicit rhetorical function of reduction is to suggest that the image has a natural, scientific relationship to its object like a natural necessary relationship to its essence instead of a sign that is just culturally learned.
• Techniques of reduction:
o Silhouette (black shape of the object)
o Flatness – used to suggest factual honesty without illusions provided by perspective
• Depth – isometry is used to express depth in isotype graphics instead of linear perspective
• There is no convergence of parallel lines. There is only fixed dimunition from foreground to background.
• Neurath was impressed by children’s drawings because he believed them to express a naïve, natural, and thus universal perception. The drawings of children are free from perspective.
• Eliminating perspective and interior detail creates a heightened alphabetic quality of international pictures.
• The actual size, scale, or position of a sign are not meant to be interpreted spatially and do not represent any literal physical qualities of the objects represented by the icons. Example: phone icons the same size, as car icons do not represent giant phones or small cars.
Reduction
• Contemporaries of Neurath also used reduction principle in about all mass-produced items from household objects to alphabets.
• The Sans Serif Font Futura was designed by Paul Renner with influence from Neurath’s ideas on reduction
• Neurath adopted reduction for all Isotype graphics.
• 20th century sans serif typefaces express the machine age
o Elimating details in reduction results in a generic look that represents no object in particular.
Consistency – refers to the stylistic uniformity of a set of signs and to the standardized use of signs allowing them to become conventional in a particular community.
• Neurath knew the is Isotype wasn’t instituted as tan official international standard, other pictorial language groups would enter the environment. There are now many pictorial languages who have entered the environment all over the world.
• Neurath worried about how too many pictorial languages would negatively effect consistency and said there would be no advantage to having too many visual languages competing.
• Neurath extended the principle of consistency to architecture and graphics.
• Peter Berhens explored identity design at the AEG in Berlin in the early 20th century.
• After World War II, the identity program became a major design service. Often it centered on a pictorial or abstract log mark for corporations.
• Stylistic consistency allows context of different signs throughout a city to be recognized.
• Isotype is so consistent that it’s understood to be meaningful when there is an occasional violation of the rules and consistency.
• Consistency results in the clear representation of a set of images read as information marking signs and not just ornaments.
• Examples exemplifying consistency:
o Sign for Munich Olympics of 1972 (figures are generated with a “body alphabet” It’s visually systematic, consistent, but not an actual grammatical rule).
o Tokyo system of the 1964 Olympics
o Sign system of the U.S. Department of Transportation prepared by the American Institution of Graphic Arts.
Semantography (AKA Blissmbolics) – Charles Bliss promoted semantography from 1940s to 1970s.
• Semantography consists of 100 symbols composed of small quantity of “schematized lines, which faintly indicate the outline of things.”
• Syntactic markers allow sematographic icons to function in 3 different modes:
o Thing
o Action
o Human evolution
• Bliss compared semantography to “a microscope and telescope for thinking” because someone literate in semantography is an observer more than a reader.
• Semantography is instrumental to the examination of empirical reality.
Conclusion
• Pictorial signs are meant to be universally legible because they appeal to supposedly objective views instead of culturally bound interpretation.
• Neurath’s philosophical aim was to create a scientific logical positivist language whose symbols would mirror nature.
• The influence of Isotype has caused many more recent designers to question the division between what is “visual” and what is “verbal”.
• Roland Barthles analyzed images and objects as linguistic signs and examined their ideological functions in history.
• “Visual/verbal rhetoric for graphic design was proposed by Gui Bonieppe. This rhetoric described images in terms traditionally applied to verbal discussion.
• Hanno Ehses, now a teacher at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, teaches designers methods to generate ideas by utilizing patterns from classical rhetoric.
• The writings of Francis Butler express his ideas on a necessity for graphic designers to create more culturally specific images.
• Victor Burgin is known for combining text with photography in projects to study sexual, political, and art historical issues.
• Gregory Ulmer is a literary theorist who advocates a visual/verbal practice based on Jacques Derrida’s philosophy.
• Through his work, Jacques Derrida attempts to dissolve traditional distinctions between interpretation and perception, and between objectivity and subjectivity. He plans for his new discipline to include mixed combination of teaching, writing, and art. It could possibly turn out to be a non-positivist revision of the roles played by Neurath as an educator, scientist, and designer.
• Neurath’s legacy as a philosophical generalist has greatly impacted the course of design in the last century. So has Neurath’s influence as a language worker using design to develop and promote ideas.
• Changes in technology and philosophy open new questions and possibilities about visual and verbal writing.
This information is from the "Reading Isotype" article by Ellen Lupton
Otto Neurath - Isotypes were developed by philosopher and social scientist Otto Neurath in the 1920s.
• Conveyed social and economic information to a general public by using simplified images. It has been applied to sociological museums, books, posters, and pedagogical materials.
• Neurath’s philosophy included the belief that language is the medium of all knowledge. Symbols are essential for the availability of empirical facts to the mind. Knowledge and its structure are disfigured b y verbal language because its vocabulary is an inconsistent not a logical mode of objects and relations in the physical world.
• Pictorial signs are the universal bride between symbolic, generic language and direct empirical evidence because vision is the link between language and nature.
• Otto Neurath and his wife directed the Isotype Institute.
o Isotype researchers gathered statistics and other information
o Symbol designers developed Isotype vocabulary
o “Transformers” converted information into Isotype graphics.
Logical Positivism – Logical Positivism is a philosophical theory formed in 1920s and 1930s by a group of philosophers called the “Vienna Circle.”
• Brought together 2 contradictory philosophies:
o Rationalism – uses logic, geometry, and mathematics to study reality instead of observation.
o Empiricism (AKA Positivism) – claims knowledge is only accessible through direct human observation.
• Rationalism and empiricism is combined in science by transforming mathematics from metaphysics to method from autonomous system reflecting divine law or the inherent order of mind to a tool for quantifying observable phenomenon
• Philosophy continued the opposition between rationalist and empiricist theories of knowledge.
Symbolic Logic – Giuseppe Peano and Gottlob Frege developed symbolic logic in the late 19th century.
• Utilizes basic relationships similar to arithmetic, such as +, -, x, =.
• Simple propositions are formed from precise definitions. Complex statements can be built from the simple propositions that are formed.
• Analytical truth makes no claim to metaphysical reality, referring to a relationship among abstract symbols.
• The Vienna Circle used symbolic language to analyze language into a minimum set of direct experiences, represented algebraically.
• The terms in every language can be reduced to a core of physical observations, such as “big, “small”, “red”, “blue.”
• Logical positivism aims o identify basic observational terns underlying all languages.
• “Mirror of Nature” – logical positivism correlated the terms of a purely abstract system with units of direct experience, attempting to analyze language into a consistent and logical mirror of nature.
Linguistic theory was developed by Ferdinand deSaussure in the late 19th century.
• Logical positivism contrasted with linguistic theory because in linguistic theory, language is fundamentally independent of any structure of nature, but in logical positivism, the meaning of any term in language is derived from structures in nature.
• Signs derive their significance from their relationship to other signs, not from correspondence with material objects (Example: I also means not you, not he, not she, etc). The sign itself is empty and meaningless.
• Some branches of the artistic avante garde were influenced by Sausserian linguistics, but positivist tradition has influenced modern design disciplines more.
Isotype – popular version of logical positivism
• Positive because as a picture, it claims a base in observation
• Logical because it concentrates experience detail into a schematic repeatable sign
• Isotype aids are comparable with scientifically formulated statements. Scientists reach theories from the observational statements. Neurath’s theories correlate with observational statements, but are distinguishable from them.
• Isotype characters are similar to scientific formulas
• Isotype symbols are reduced and conventionalized schemes of direct experience.
• Neurath considered pictures a very neutral and therefore superior mode of expression. “Just through its neutrality, and its independence of separate languages, visual education is superior to word education.
• Pictorial information would dissolve cultural differences because of its universality. Pictures can be understood more easily by anyone in any culture because language is not necessary to understand a picture.
• Since the photograph is a mechanical record of optical data, it is the most neutral of all.
• Tried to combine the mechanical empiricism
• Isofarms are pictograms with generic status indicated by style, which shows that it is public information and not an advertisement or decoration.
• Constructivists (Theorists were destil and the Bauhaus) – geometry could synthesize art and technology and offer a “visual language” that could exist independently of particular cultures. Their goal was to create a visual language that could be used in many cultures.
Pictorial Statistics
• Robin Kinross noted the influence of Isotypes could be broken loosely into 2 areas.
• Only quantitative facts are socially significant.
• Since most people are afraid of banal details of large amounts quantitative information as rows of figures, simple, clean, colored, symbols (Example: simplified men, women, employees) were used to represent quantitative information instead of abstract numbers.
• Isotype semiotic terminology – Isotype figures are both icons and indexes.
• Icon – a sign whose form is analogous to the object it represents. As an icon, it’s grounded by physical resemblance.
• Index – a sign linked to its object by virtue of proximity or direct physical contact. As an index, it’s generated by numerical data.
• Statistical tabulation is an index of empirical observations. Example: a population curve is a shape produced by information it describes, not an invented image.
• Statistics promote the objectivity of numbers while pressing and interest in explanation.
Pictorial signs
• Neurath’s writing suggests 2 central rules of generating vocabulary of international pictures:
o Reduction – for determining the style of individual signs
o Consistency – for giving a group of signs the appearance of a coherent system.
• These rules have implicit (practical functions).
• They also have explicitly (rhetorical functions).
• These constructive rules project empirical scientific objectivity
• They reinforce the “language quality” of picture signs because individual signs look more like letters and groups of signs look like complete, sufficient languages.
• Reduction – to find the simplest way to express an object
• Implicit rhetorical function of reduction is to suggest that the image has a natural, scientific relationship to its object like a natural necessary relationship to its essence instead of a sign that is just culturally learned.
• Techniques of reduction:
o Silhouette (black shape of the object)
o Flatness – used to suggest factual honesty without illusions provided by perspective
• Depth – isometry is used to express depth in isotype graphics instead of linear perspective
• There is no convergence of parallel lines. There is only fixed dimunition from foreground to background.
• Neurath was impressed by children’s drawings because he believed them to express a naïve, natural, and thus universal perception. The drawings of children are free from perspective.
• Eliminating perspective and interior detail creates a heightened alphabetic quality of international pictures.
• The actual size, scale, or position of a sign are not meant to be interpreted spatially and do not represent any literal physical qualities of the objects represented by the icons. Example: phone icons the same size, as car icons do not represent giant phones or small cars.
Reduction
• Contemporaries of Neurath also used reduction principle in about all mass-produced items from household objects to alphabets.
• The Sans Serif Font Futura was designed by Paul Renner with influence from Neurath’s ideas on reduction
• Neurath adopted reduction for all Isotype graphics.
• 20th century sans serif typefaces express the machine age
o Elimating details in reduction results in a generic look that represents no object in particular.
Consistency – refers to the stylistic uniformity of a set of signs and to the standardized use of signs allowing them to become conventional in a particular community.
• Neurath knew the is Isotype wasn’t instituted as tan official international standard, other pictorial language groups would enter the environment. There are now many pictorial languages who have entered the environment all over the world.
• Neurath worried about how too many pictorial languages would negatively effect consistency and said there would be no advantage to having too many visual languages competing.
• Neurath extended the principle of consistency to architecture and graphics.
• Peter Berhens explored identity design at the AEG in Berlin in the early 20th century.
• After World War II, the identity program became a major design service. Often it centered on a pictorial or abstract log mark for corporations.
• Stylistic consistency allows context of different signs throughout a city to be recognized.
• Isotype is so consistent that it’s understood to be meaningful when there is an occasional violation of the rules and consistency.
• Consistency results in the clear representation of a set of images read as information marking signs and not just ornaments.
• Examples exemplifying consistency:
o Sign for Munich Olympics of 1972 (figures are generated with a “body alphabet” It’s visually systematic, consistent, but not an actual grammatical rule).
o Tokyo system of the 1964 Olympics
o Sign system of the U.S. Department of Transportation prepared by the American Institution of Graphic Arts.
Semantography (AKA Blissmbolics) – Charles Bliss promoted semantography from 1940s to 1970s.
• Semantography consists of 100 symbols composed of small quantity of “schematized lines, which faintly indicate the outline of things.”
• Syntactic markers allow sematographic icons to function in 3 different modes:
o Thing
o Action
o Human evolution
• Bliss compared semantography to “a microscope and telescope for thinking” because someone literate in semantography is an observer more than a reader.
• Semantography is instrumental to the examination of empirical reality.
Conclusion
• Pictorial signs are meant to be universally legible because they appeal to supposedly objective views instead of culturally bound interpretation.
• Neurath’s philosophical aim was to create a scientific logical positivist language whose symbols would mirror nature.
• The influence of Isotype has caused many more recent designers to question the division between what is “visual” and what is “verbal”.
• Roland Barthles analyzed images and objects as linguistic signs and examined their ideological functions in history.
• “Visual/verbal rhetoric for graphic design was proposed by Gui Bonieppe. This rhetoric described images in terms traditionally applied to verbal discussion.
• Hanno Ehses, now a teacher at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, teaches designers methods to generate ideas by utilizing patterns from classical rhetoric.
• The writings of Francis Butler express his ideas on a necessity for graphic designers to create more culturally specific images.
• Victor Burgin is known for combining text with photography in projects to study sexual, political, and art historical issues.
• Gregory Ulmer is a literary theorist who advocates a visual/verbal practice based on Jacques Derrida’s philosophy.
• Through his work, Jacques Derrida attempts to dissolve traditional distinctions between interpretation and perception, and between objectivity and subjectivity. He plans for his new discipline to include mixed combination of teaching, writing, and art. It could possibly turn out to be a non-positivist revision of the roles played by Neurath as an educator, scientist, and designer.
• Neurath’s legacy as a philosophical generalist has greatly impacted the course of design in the last century. So has Neurath’s influence as a language worker using design to develop and promote ideas.
• Changes in technology and philosophy open new questions and possibilities about visual and verbal writing.
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