Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft

Commissioned by the Bibliographisches Institut in Leipzig, the atlas Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft is one of the best-known examples of Otto Neurath’s “Viennese method of pictorial statistics” (at the time it wasn’t yet called ISOTYPE) in action. It was published as a large-format (30×45 cm) folder containing 130 plates, 98 of which display maps and charts relating to topics such as history, migrations, economics, urbanism, etc. A complete PDF version of Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft can be downloaded for free here.

The maps and charts were originally hand-crafted by the staff from the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (Social and economic museum of Vienna), whose core team included Neurath, “transformer” Marie Reidemeister (later Marie Neurath) and graphic designer Gerd Arntz. Futura, which had been adopted by the Museum for all its printed matter some time in 1929, was used for titles, captions, numbers, etc., but the 30 plates of end matter (afterword by Neurath, statistical sources, index, contents) were typeset in Berthold-Grotesk (bottom picture).

The last couple of years have seen a steady stream of publications devoted to Neurath, his method and his work, most notably Isotype: design and contexts, 1925–1971, edited by Christopher Burke, Eric Kindel and Sue Walker. Though more modest in scope, Robin Kinross and Marie Neurath’s The transformer: principles of making Isotype charts is also a treat.