Otto Neurath and the ISOTYPE - 100 Years of Visual Language
We could not have picked a more fitting year for IEEE VIS in Vienna!
2025 is a special anniversary year celebrating the development of a visual language. One hundred years ago, Otto Neurath (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Neurath) and his team in Vienna began developing what would become the ISOTYPE - short for the International System of Typographic Picture Education. What started in the context of post-World War I Austria as a practical method for educating the public about social and economic conditions has since become an important reference point in the history of visual communication.
Otto Neurath (1882-1945) was an Austrian philosopher, sociologist, and political economist. He is still widely known for his work with the Vienna Circle, a group of logical positivists who sought to clarify philosophical problems through the tools of science and language. After working on housing reform and public education in Vienna during the 1920s, he founded the Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna. His main aim was to visually present statistical and social data using standardized pictograms rather than text or abstract graphs. He was not just interested in aesthetics; many of the people Otto Neurath hoped to reach had limited literacy or formal education. He intended the visual format to be more inclusive, immediate, and easily comparable across languages.
ISOTYPES (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotype_(picture_language) consists of standardized and abstracted pictorial symbols representing social-scientific data. They have specific guidelines for combining identical figures using serial repetition. For example, a single symbol (e.g., a figure representing 1,000 workers) would be repeated across the image rather than scaled proportionally, like pie charts or bar graphs. Otto Neurath worked closely with the German artist Gerd Arntz, who developed a coherent set of pictograms. Arntz’s symbols were deliberately geometric and straightforward, designed to be easily reproduced and recognizable even at small sizes. Marie Neurath, Otto’s later wife, was also crucial in shaping the ISOTYPE method and led much of its development after his death. ISOTYPES are often referred to as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics.
Although the ISOTYPE method is often associated with its graphic output, Neurath saw it as part of a broader project called visual education. He was interested in how people learn from images and how knowledge could be structured visually - not just to inform but to shape public understanding. He explicitly rejected the idea of “illustrating” text; for him, the image should carry the content independently without requiring a written explanation. The underlying principles of the ISOTYPE system still resonate in today’s visualization guidelines. As a visual depiction of data visualization is central to communicating science, policy, and social change, it is helpful to revisit Otto Neurath’s work and his contribution to education.