Originally from Vienna, Otto Neurath (1882–1945) can be seen as the godfather of today’s infographics.
An innovator in museum practice, Neurath also invented the Isotype method of pictorial statistics in close collaboration with Marie Reidemeister, with whom he fled the rise of Nazism, eventually landing in England. Through fellow émigré Wolfgang Foges and his book packaging firm Adprint, they were commissioned to design Isotype charts for printed matter supported by the UK Ministry of Information during the Second World War.
Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) charts employ graphic or pictorial methodology to represent social-scientific data, with specific guidelines on how to combine the identical figures using serial repetition. Soft propaganda, special relationships and a new democracy by Christopher Burke and Wim Jansen illustrates around 250 Isotypes from these publications and provides in-depth information about their production and remarkable quality during wartime.
De Buitenkant, illustrated paperback, 208pp, 17cm x 24cm, English text