Christopher Burke

Sue Walker

Eric Kindel

Austrian sociologist Otto Neurath developed the Isotype system of pictograms in the early 1930s as a way to communicate complex information in visual form. Appearing in a variety of media, including books, posters, and films, it was designed to inform ordinary citizens about their place in the world. Isotype is the first comprehensive account of this seminal movement in the history of visual communication. Featuring new research, including previously unseen visual material, this long-overdue account traces the development of the Isotype system from its birth in prewar Vienna, through a wartime shift of production to the Netherlands, and finally to 1940s England, where the Isotype Institute continued to produce work until 1971. Isotype documents the visual system's worldwide influence, including its educational uses by the United States, Soviet Russia, and Africa.

Design and Contexts 1925 1971

Isotype

Paul Luna

Typography Papers is book-length publication from the Department of Typography at the University of Reading (in England). Typography Papers 9 opens with a beautifully illustrated article by type designer Gerard Unger on "Romanesque" letters, followed by a new installment of Eric Kindel's ground-breaking history of stencil letters. Maurice Göldner contributes the first history of an early twentieth-century German typefounder, Brüder Butter. Paul Luna discusses the role of pictures in dictionaries. William Berkson and Peter Enneson propose a new view of readability of text. Titus Nemeth describes a new form of Arabic type for metal composition. Together, this international lineup of contributors shows the remarkable variety and vitality of typography now.

Typography Papers 9

Linda Reynolds

Hendrik D.L. Vervliet

Justin Howes

Typography Papers is an occasional book-length publication with a broad international scope, publishing extended articles relating typography to adjacent disciplines. Number 7 presents an eclectic collection of articles beginning with a lengthy consideration by type historian H. D. L. Vervliet of Claude Garamond: the designer whose new roman typefaces debuted in Paris in the 1530s and went on to dominate Western typography for the next two centuries. The late Justin Howes looks at the eighteenth-century belief in the necessity of perfection in type and printing. Eric Kindel discusses a nineteenth-century scheme for univeral letters. Sue Walker writes on twentieth-century typefaces designed for reading by young children. The issue concludes with Linda Reynolds's eyewitness account of pioneering work in legibility research in the 1970s and 1980s.

Number 7

Typography Papers

Eric Kindel

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