We might've done this before, but better.

February 21, 2009 3:28 PM

Mapping with Isotype:A collection of examples of Otto Neurath, Gerd Arntz, and Marie Reidemeister’s cartographic language, isotype. (Still influential today).
posted by Jeff_Larson (13 comments total)

Shoot this is fantastic: ISOTYPE INSTITUTE, shoulda been up there, my apologies.
posted by Jeff_Larson at 3:31 PM on February 21

Thanks for this, Jeff. Edward Tufte has also written and lectured extensively on "visualizing quantitative information" (his phrase, not mine). When it's done well, as in isotype, there's a kind of elegance and beauty to it that moves it beyond mapping to art.
posted by angiep at 4:01 PM on February 21

This is my favorite (via lots of linkage)
posted by puckish at 4:27 PM on February 21

Neurath as in Neurath's boat? This is a pictographic language developed in the spirit of positivism? Awesome, I didn't know about this! Thanks!
posted by painquale at 4:39 PM on February 21

This pdf gives a nice explication of the theory underlying Isotype. I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed. Members of the Vienna Circle were all about supplanting natural languages with more perfect artificial languages (Carnap was a big Esperanto proponent), but while I can see that Neurath had some (flawed) theory about how this makes vocabulary more perfect, there's no sign of what the grammar is supposed to look like. Neurath promises a grammar of pictures in these writings, but I don't see anything approaching a formal way to compose new pictures from a stock of primitive ones. That transition from shoe to handmade shoe doesn't look like it's based on any purely logical principles. I'm surprised -- the positivists were all about logical structure. I was hoping for a thoroughly positivist picture language.

Neurath drew a mean elephant, though!
posted by painquale at 5:04 PM on February 21

excellent post!
posted by yonation at 6:58 PM on February 21

an ethnography of face-hugger victims?
posted by geos at 7:22 PM on February 21

While the isotype symbols might not be universally communicable, they are evocative in a way that would make them easy to teach and learn. And it would be useful to have a set of symbols, similar in design to isotype, recognized by a large segment of the world's population, for use on warning signs and the like.
posted by LogicalDash at 7:24 PM on February 21

Previously: the Gerd Arntz Archive.
posted by jouke at 7:56 PM on February 21

Here's a more modern attempt to do the same thing, inspired by Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
posted by ver at 11:26 PM on February 21

Japanese map symbols
posted by Rhomboid at 12:41 AM on February 22

Thanks, jouke I hadn't seen that previous post (and I searched for "isotype" even)!
posted by Jeff_Larson at 10:01 AM on February 22

Excellent stuff, many thanks Jeff!
posted by carter at 8:34 PM on February 22