I found this week’s reading to actually be quite interesting and informative, although I did already know of Isotype, I had never looked into the history of it.

Isotypes are a form of displaying statistical information with the repetition of an con that is representative of a specific value. Otto Neurath, the creator of isotype “intended it (isotypes) to be signs that spoke for themselves and bypassed verbal language”, although without the context, there would be no way to determine the value of the statistics, so instead it compliments the information by showing an accurate visual representation of the data. Using this example below I will show how these charts differ with and without verbal or written information.

Without Writing

With Writing

https://eagereyes.org/techniques/isotype

As you can see, the first one you can understand is showing a quantity of people and something to do with some being involved with a factory, but the point is not conveyed unless you see the information or know background of the image.

Neurath did make a valid point on how his method is greater than the alternate style of pictogram graphing, which involves expanding the size of the image/symbol used in a relative scale to the others being used, as he shows through these two examples below.

Pictogram

Isotype

These isotypes were used commonly throughout the 30’s and 40’s to display a range of important information, such as infant mortality rates and population density. They are still used today, just in my personal research I found them more commonly referred to as pictographs, although majority of these examples appear to be from early education books to help children with learning graphs and counting.