New York Review of Books Review
The prototypes for this pictorial language were developed in the 1930s at the Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna by Otto Neurath (1882-1945), a left-leaning Viennese social scientist who specialized in political economy. His system of sign symbols, which became known as the International System of Typographic Picture Education (Isotype), grew out of his calling to revolutionize understanding among peoples and institutions. That graphic design history was made by a political economist was no accident. Neurath "wanted to familiarize and educate the working class about the broader systems of order at work in the contemporary city," Nader Vossoughian, a curator and critic, writes in OTTO NEURATH: The Language of the Global Polls (NAI Publishers, paper, $35), a compact, exhaustively researched biography that explains Neurath's visual philosophy in the context of his social and environmental concerns. Neurath sought to develop "a system of graphic representation that made statistical data legible and accessible to nonspecialized mass audiences," to "bridge the gap between reading and seeing in an effort to accelerate the transmission of information." His system of reductive images, which portrayed people through the use of clichéd characteristics (laborers holding hammers, office workers at typewriters, farmers with hoes), were so easy to recognize that words were superfluous. Indeed, the range of Isotype imagery was so broad, and the anatomical, building and machine diagrams so varied, virtually any idea could be expressed by one or more combined images. Neurath may not be a household name, but he is a major figure in the world of visual statistics. Other books on his life and work have been published over the past decade. But Vossoughian's, originally written to accompany an exhibition of Neurath's work in the Netherlands, is particularly useful, providing a generous number of never-before-seen illustrations (including proposals and sketches) and thematically breaking down Neurath's primary concerns: community, democracy and globalism. Each of these contributed to a narrative that Neurath believed could be made more transparent by the application of his pictures. Man "receives his education in the most comfortable of means, partly during his periods of rest, through optical impressions" he wrote. According to Vossoughian, he believed that "the dissemination of images or pictures could foster Bildung, that is, education and self-actualization." One of the best examples of how Isotype symbols were used to raise popular awareness is to be found in "Modern Man in the Making," Neurath's opus, published by Knopf in 1939; it beautifully demonstrates his means of presenting otherwise impenetrable data in bite-size, though not dumbed-down, nuggets, with layouts that are clean, crisp and easy on the eye. In his own book, Vossoughian makes clear that Neurath was the father of the current trend in information graphics, in print and on the Web, and that the prototypes he created are still as timely as ever. NEURATH helped to improve communications out of a sense of altruism. But for many designers, creating symbols or logos is simply a profitable business. Why should the cost of designing a little insignia rise into the range of six or seven figures? Because logos are more than mere identifying marks. They are sacred icons, or, as Paul Rand - the creator of enduring logos for I.B.M., Westinghouse and other corporations - once said: They are rabbits' feet, emblems of the incalculable. Enough well-known symbols and mnemonic signs have been designed over the 20 th and 21st centuries to fill a thick book, and Angus Hyland and Steven Bateman have compiled more than 300 pages' worth in SYMBOL (Laurence King, paper, $40), which contains over 1,300 logos classified by visual type. The symbols run the gamut, from abstract marks like those of Canal Metro (a Spanish broadcaster) and Chase Manhattan Bank, to the unmistakable penguin of Penguin Books, to the heraldic lion shield of the Danish police. Many, like a symbol for "Watsu," "an abbreviated term for water Shiatsu," are so difficult to interpret that even the explanation doesn't help. (The meanings of some symbols are indeed in the eye of the beholder.) Other symbols are so obvious, however - like that of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a heart as American flag being stitched with a needle - that the pleasure one derives from solving the visual riddle is lost. "Symbol" has its share of clunkers, like the logo design for KereKere (a chain of Australian restaurants named after the Fijian custom of "giving without expecting repayment," the book notes), featuring what looks like a cup from which hearts waft like steam. But there are also brilliant, timeless, unforgettable marks, like William Golden's CBS "eye" and Jean Widmer's Centre Georges Pompidou rectangle, depicting the grid of the famous Paris museum with its external stairway snaking up the facade. Hyland, a partner at Pentagram Design in London, and Bateman, a writer who has collaborated on many design projects; have divided their book into "Abstract" and "Representational" sections with numerous thematic subsets: abstract circles, triangles, dots and crosses; representational snowflakes, birds, stars and hearts. Although "Symbol" includes a detailed introduction by David Gibbs, a communications strategist, its main body comprises the marks, shown as a continuum of manipulated forms in pure geometries or visual puns - the quintessential tool of symbol designers. As a comparative study, "Symbol" will be instructive for designers, marketers and businesspeople; it's interesting to see the ratio of avant-garde to conventional ideas (about 50-50). Certain motifs seem theoretically impractical as marks, but on the printed page they have a sort of logic. The random, nonsensical squiggle for Parque de Atracciones de Madrid (a theme park), which "recalls the thrilling experience of riding in a roller coaster," would make Otto Neurath apoplectic, but apparently it worked. It turns out a bad design can still be a good mark. Even the most complex or heraldic logos in "Symbol" are reductive. To function efficiently, a logo must be readable whether it's as large as a billboard or as small as a colophon. But bookplates - another form of identifying mark - can be as baroque or as simplified as the creator desires. In EX LIBRIS: The Art of Bookplates (Yale university, paper, $15), Martin Hopkinson, a former curator of prints at the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow, explains that bookplates, first produced in the 15th century and "sometimes known as ex libris, from the Latin for 'from the books of,'" were "originally a mark of prestige and status in society." For the devout bibliophile, a bookplate is still a necessity. According to Hopkinson, "a resurgence of high-quality artist-designed bookplates in the 1970s coincided with the revival in Britain of the technique of wood engraving, and a proliferation in the art world of the production of multiples of all kinds." I reckon that the plates in this slim, richly illustrated volume may inspire another resurgence - perhaps in digital form. Among the impressive reproductions in "Ex Libris" are the 1524 portrait designed by Albrecht Dürer for the Nuremberg humanist Willibald Pirckheimer; Eric Gill's 1920 bookplate for the Tamil philosopher and art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, a masterpiece of erotic simplicity depicting a scene from the "Ramayana"; and Lucien Pissarro's restrained woodengraved bookplate of a tranquil rural scene, made in 1920 for himself and his wife. But the ones I covet, for they are reminiscent of the most striking marks by Neurath and in "Symbol," are the 1923 plates by the artist and poet Sidney James Hunt, who was a secretary and treasurer of the English Bookplate Society. To possess his woodcuts of Narcissus-like figures in black, red and green - perfect examples of English Vorticism - would mean having a modernist print looking up at you every time you opened a book.
Library Journal Review
This work by Hyland, a partner at international design firm Pentagram, and Bateman, a freelance writer who contributes to design magazines, is a distinctive arrangement of symbols used by companies around the world, focusing purely on visual design. As Hyland writes in the preface, "The idea behind this book is to explore the visual language of symbols according to its most basic element: form.divested of all the agendas, [and] meanings." To achieve this classification by form, the book is arranged according to two major groups: abstract shapes (e.g., circles, squares) and representational forms (e.g., flowers, animals). About 1300 small, black-and-white symbols are included, each accompanied by captions indicating the name of the client, the designer of the symbol, the relevant business sector (e.g., finance, transport), the year of the design, and a brief description. These different points are all indexed. VERDICT This compilation is successful as a catalog of symbol forms and is thus a good reference tool for logo designers. For graphic designers and design students, this is a must-have.-Eric Linderman, Euclid P.L., OH (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
