It all started when I was on an evening flight from New York City to Atlanta. The evening flight service had dimmed the lights, the flight was a bit crowded, and most people were asleep or watching their small screens. I was restless, had downloaded some Isotype images from Chris Mullen’s amazing Fulltable website, and for some reason stopped to really explore the isotype chart “Planning for Cotton” from ‘Two Commonwealths’ in 1945. Without any previous understanding of Soviet governmental structure, economic planning, or industrial supply chain, I was able to understand a phenomenally massive economic structure just by reading the chart. It was a transformational experience and I was hooked.
Since then I have written many articles about Isotype, and at this time, am about half-way through writing a book tentatively called “The Rules of Isotype”. As my curiosity has increased, I have taken various intensive steps towards immersing myself in the existing research as well as the actual designs of Isotype across the roughly 6 or 7 decades that its main practitioners lived and worked.
Below are links to the articles in 1 place, but I also have a growing (and substantial) archive of digitized Isotype books in full, as well as research materials of the work by Otto and Marie Neurath, Gerd Arntz, Rudolf Modley, Peter Alma, Augustin Tschinkel, and many others. I guess I’ll have to add a way of accessing that soon too.
If you have any interest or questions or just want to say hello - by all means drop me a line! I’m super excited to discuss this stuff.