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The Stuff of Life: The Origins of Bathroom Signs
ByA book tells the story of Isotype, a language of pictograms that made their way into public places everywhere
In the 1930s, Austrian sociologist, philosopher and curator Otto Neurath and his wife Marie pioneered ISOTYPE
—the International System of Typographic Picture Education, a new
visual language for capturing quantitative information in pictograms,
sparking the golden age of infographics in print.
The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype Charts is the first English-language volume to capture the story of Isotype, an essential foundation for our modern visual language dominated by pictograms in everything from bathroom signage to computer interfaces to GOOD's acclaimed Transparencies.
The real cherry on top is a previously unpublished essay by Marie Neurath, who was very much on par with Otto as Isotype's co-inventor, written a year before her death in 1986 and telling the story of how she carried on the Isotype legacy after Otto's death in 1946.
Richly illustrated and contextualized with fascinating historical essays, The Transformer
is a vital primer for a visual langauge that not only frames much of
today's communication but also speaks to us on a powerful intuitive
level.
This post also appears at Brain Pickings.
Images: Courtesy of Maria Popova
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