This week in lectures, we discussed the swiss/international style that is used by designers and artists all around the world today. It primarily focused on small, minimalist layouts with simple geometric shapes and few colours. “Form follow function” was starting to emerge more and more in advertisements, book covers, product packaging etc as designers began to play around with typographical elements. The international style highlights how effectively minimal information can convey a huge range of ideas, if used in the right colours, tones and hierarchy.
One of the designers from this time, playing around with simplistic isotypes was Marie Neurath. I wanted to do more research on her life and career as she is one of the few female names I’ve heard in the design industry in this era.
Neurath (as pictured above) with her husband Otto Neurath coined the acronym ISOTYPE, standing for International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. After her husbands death, Neurath carried on their work with a team of illustrators to produce 80 children’s books, each detailing complicated processes in simple, easy to understand illustrations. Things like how a flower grows ever year, how bread is made or how islands are formed.
Leaving out the “why” behind complex ideas, Neurath focused on the “what”, for example this segment on how tulips grow.
With its somehow captivating style and attention seeking colours, not only is an infographic like this educational, but interesting for children and adults alike.
References
https://www.londondesignfestival.com/event/marie-neurath-picturing-science-exhibition-and-study-day
Design Doodles 