Maria, Don,

Prof Eric Kindel and his colleagues at Reading University (UK) know a lot about Isotype and can perhaps answer these questions.  
His email address appears on this page about the Isotype holdings in their Collections and Archives:
https://www.reading.ac.uk/m/typography/collectionsandarchives/typ-isotype-collection.aspx

Stephen Boyd Davis
Professor of Design Research
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London
SW7 2EU
www.rca.ac.uk
 

On 14/02/2021, 16:45, "PhD-Design on behalf of Don Norman" <[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:

    Maria del Mar Navarro asked:

    On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 7:06 PM Maria del Mar Navarro <
    [log in to unmask]> wrote:

    > In the Isotype literature, there are brief mentions of the Neurath's
    > travel(s) to Mexico City to work on Isotype. Has anyone encountered
    > literature on the subject that may shed light on these efforts or perhaps
    > approaches that I may take in my due process?


    As yet another example of my general ignorance, I had never heard the term
    "isotype."  I had no idea what Maria's request might be referring to. So,
    of course, I turned to my search engine.

    This article, *Supplement to Otto Neurath: Visual Education, * in the
    "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" at
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/visual-education.html was
    revealing. Alas, it only mentions Mexico with one word ("Mexico" in this
    paragraph.

    But the general success of the visual language was suggested by the
    international scale of the commissions received and instruction for the
    application of the method: from Russia, between 1931 and 1934, Mexico in
    1936, and the US, to Nigeria and China (Burke et al. 2014). After touring
    Germany and exhibitions in The Hague and Chicago in 1929, in 1931 the
    Soviet embassy in Vienna invited Neurath to establish a Museum of Economy
    and Society in Moscow. The Council of People’s Commissars decreed: ‘All
    public and co-operative organisations, unions and schools are directed to
    use picture statistics according to the method of Dr. Neurath.’ Neurath’s
    personal and intellectual efforts regarding unity of science and pictorial
    language were enthusiastically chronicled in the United States by his
    cousin Waldemar Kaempffert (Weybright 1936, Kaempffert 1938 and Kaempffert
    1939). In terms that resonated with urban America, Neurath was described as
    a social scientist, social showman and practical man (Weybright 1936).

    <https://plato.stanford.edu/index.html>

    The larger entry about Neurath might be of interest to some readers with 12
    instances of "isotype" but none to Mexico.(
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/index.html)
    ----
    And then again, there is Marie: "Meet Marie Neurath, the Woman Who
    Transformed Isotype Into an International Endeavor. She was instrumental in
    the development of the universal icons, and even coined the name."
    https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/meet-marie-neurath-the-woman-who-transformed-isoytpe-into-an-international-endeavor/
    .

    And also see
    https://medium.com/nightingale/the-missing-legacy-of-marie-neurath-f9800733d1fc

    Historical credit is often hard to assign, and with the story of the
    Isotype is it even more cloudy. While there is no question that Otto
    Neurath invented, directed, and drove the evolution of the Isotype, it was
    Marie Neurath who served as his main contributor from 1926 until 1945 when
    he died. She continued for another 26 years after his death, working in the
    name of the Isotype Institute they co-created. While Otto Neurath pushed
    for its international adoption, Marie was the master who put it into
    practice.


    So, my search was not helpful to Maria, but it was very helpful for my
    education -- and so I post it because others might also find it interesting.
    ----------
    Don Norman


    >


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