Three short talks about lesser-known aspects of Isotype, a method for showing facts and connections in pictorial form. The talks draw on new research from the ‘Isotype revisited’ project at the University of Reading.
Between 1942 and 1945, Otto Neurath drafted a ‘visual autobiography’, an innovative attempt to document his life and work through its visual influences, and culminating in Isotype. This talk describes the shape and content of Neurath’s text, his intentions for its publication – not realized at the time – and work now underway to give it published form as From hieroglyphics to Isotype.
Graphic explanation for children is one way to describe the children’s books designed by the Isotype Institute from the 1940s to the late 1960s. This talk will offer an account of the making of these books and show how the Neurath’s brought a child-centred approach to book design, and how Isotype principles were used to enhance accessibility.
In the mid 1950s, some ten years after Otto Neurath’s death, Marie Neurath, director of the Isotype Institute, travelled to West Africa to consult on public information initiatives in several countries emerging from British colonial rule to full independence. This talk will review Marie Neurath’s trips to Nigeria, Gold Coast and Sierra Leone in 1954 and 1955, before looking in detail at Isotype work produced in support of social democracy in the Western Region of Nigeria.
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