Graphics 1 Information Graphics 1

1. Graphics 1Information Graphics 1

2. formal attempts to understand information graphics; Otto Neurath development of the relationship between typography and information graphics; Cologne / Bonn airport further development of typefaces for legibility; Eric Spiekerman pictograms as computer fonts; Berlin Transport Services

3. Austrian philosopher, sociologist and economist prominent member of the Vienna Circle and exponent of Logical Positivism developed, with Gerd Arntz and Marie Reidemeister, the ‘Isotype’ system,1936 International System Of TYpographic Picture Education

4. Logical Positivism empiricism - knowledge of the world must rely on observation and measurement rationalism - that progress must be based on maths and logic grew from work of the ‘First Vienna Circle’ prior to WW1 and ‘Berlin Circle’ and ‘Vienna Circle’ afterwards 1929 Neurath published with Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap summary of their doctrine, especially; rejection of metaphysics as having ‘meaning’ that knowledge should be expressed in a scientific ‘standard language’ project to gradually replace everyday language concepts with precise ones in the standard language

5. campaigned for the adoption of an international system of communication co-founded with Charles Morris and Rudolph Carnap the ‘International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science’ worked with Augustin Tschinkel and Erwin Bernath, suggested three phases to understanding a pictogram; the first glance – the most important qualities are perceived the second glance – the less important qualities are perceived the third glance – additional details are perceived… …hence the first attempts to understand systematically the way in which information is apprehended and understood

6. was a founding director of the Social and Economic Museum of Vienna Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum developed the ‘Vienna Method’ a system for representing statistical information pictorially the purpose was to provide attractive and memorable images rather than accurate and complete statistics more easily forgotten rules of the system were based on disambiguating presentation, eg; quantity was represented by number of objects rather than size… …size is relative, but number can be counted… …size is open to interpretation; height, width, area; which metric is being used?

7. put together a team to develop the method Marie Reidemeister, information theoretician who transformed the complex raw information into sketches for presentation Gerd Arntz, German designer, joined 1929 and produced 4,000 simplified and consistent pictograms

8. motivation was to bring knowledge to ordinary people Socialist agenda; lift people out of poverty and poor health many illiterate, many had no knowledge of science successes led to commissions from USSR and Soviet Bloc rise of the fascist movement in Austria led Neurath and Marie Reidemeister (now his wife) to leave museum in Vienna closed 1934, moved to The Netherlands established International Foundation for Visual Education at The Hague; renamed the Vienna Method to Isotype fled to England after the start of WW2 and established the Isotype Institute in 1942 (collection now held at University of Reading) Arntz stayed behind and continued Neurath’s work

11. designed by Intégral, Paris effort to harmonise pictorial information with textual information; considered the sign as whole, rather than the pictogram and text as separate components same grid and line thicknesses used throughout typeface reduced to fourteen elements; two dots two lines 10 arcs

14. graphic elements used for typeface were then used to create the pictograms

15. German typographer, professor at the University of the Arts Bremen founded MetaDesign in 1979 where he developed many important information graphics projects his typefaces (and those that he inspired) are the most used in information graphics the clean, uncluttered character of his work has influenced many areas of graphic design, including computer interfaces

16. an architectural historian, began by running a hot-metal press in his basement to fund himself through university spent seven years as a freelance graphic designer in London before starting MetaDesign has designed for Audi, The Economist, Bosch, Volkswagen and many public bodies around the world is passionate about information design, but also pragmatic; ‘I would love to only do work that is for the social good… improve social security applications and signage for the underground’ ‘…if you work for the council or similar, five people come to a meeting… and they just keep kicking each other’ ‘If I had my choice I would always design bus schedules for public clients but I know they [public bodies] will take me more seriously because I’ve been successful at business.’ (all from Baldwin and Roberts, 2006)

17. originally designed for the German Post Office; to be easy to read at small font sizes – postage-stamp size to be easy to read at an angle to also work for post-boxes, buildings and vehicle livery, ie very large sizes German Post Office did not use it, but has been used widely since, and adapted for serif face, Cyrillic alphabet and computer use

18. FF Info, 1997 designed for Düsseldorf International Airport signage; highly legible – heavier than FF Meta no need for small-font legibility the pictograms used are based on the typeface

19. Nokia Sans, 2002 based on bitmap images of phone screens designed to make the most of low-resolution display

20. five substrate colours used to categorise the signs implemented as a computer font rather than graphics each pictogram based on a gridded square vector description generated (ie just as you would for Inkscape) font editor used to import vector format and convert to font format such as Truetype or Postscript font installed on computer system and pictograms sent straight for rendering on output device

21. developed the pictograms used for the Berlin Transport Services project for use at airports constrained by existing Association of German Airports signs ‘branding’ was an issue – the style had to be consistent within and between signs based the new pictograms on the FF Info typeface

22. 1997 Meta Design asked to create pictograms for packaging for Sto AG visual research led to a collection of over 1,000 existing labels customer research revealed importance of non-linguistic communication not all users literate large migrant workforce cultural aspects of storage and use of product

23. early efforts to systematise information graphics based in science, philosophy and philanthropic motivations; socialism spread of literacy prompted the return of language to signs new problems of integration and legibility computer software allowed pictograms themselves to become typefaces universal availability; eg Zapf Dingbats abcdefghijklmnop abcdefghijklmnop

24. Baldwin, Jonathan and Roberts, Lucienne (2006) Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice, AVA Publishing.   http://www.usp.org/audiences/consumers/pictograms Abdullah, Rayan and Habner, Roger (2006) Pictograms, Icons & Signs: A Guide to Information Graphics, illustrated edition. Thames & Hudson.   http://www.neha.nl/neurath/museum.php http://www.fulltable.com/iso/ http://www.gerdarntz.org/home