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.