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Today's world is, unarguably, based on numbers. Economic parameters, tax, wealth generation, house prices, healthcare statistics, all this and more needs to be known by businesses, government, public services. However, considering the enormous importance of quantitative information in Western societies, it comes as quite a surprise to see in which poor state the discipline of information design, or visualisation of quantitative information, is. The kind of graphics that we most commonly see are bar charts and simple two-dimensional curves, usually with time progression indicated along the x-coordinate. Those types of visualisation cover only the most bare bone necessities of 'visualisation' and even then many things can go wrong (as pointed out by Edward R. Tufte, the leading authority on this subject in the English language world, in his two books, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Envisioning Information). There are hardly any common standards in data visualisation. Each community follows its own needs. The scientific community might do a bit better than others having an acknowledged need to understand complex data sets through visual display and also having the mathematical and computational tools at its hands. Large enterprises employ expensive design companies to beef up the publication of their annual results visually, often to the detriment of the informational content. And government departments now often follow in the footsteps of business by emphasising design over substance. The group that benefits least from all this visual exuberance (or austerity) are we, the public at large, those who, in the end, pay for it, either as buyers of goods (where the graphic design is factored into the price) or as customers of public services, as citizens, subjects of government.
This poor state of affairs is all the more surprising once we know that already in the 1920ies and 1930ies a clear and comprehensive method for the visual desplay of quantitative information has been developed. Then a team around the Austrian scientist Otto Neurath, including his wife Marie Neurath and the German graphic designer Gerd Arntz, developed ISOTYPE, a method that uses pictograms in charts which are often, not always, based on the principles behind bar charts. Instead of fairly meaningless and ugly bars pictograms are used to illustrate the contents of the information relayed. At that time pictograms were only just emerging (Neurath and Arntz did not invent them). The creation of a mass consumer society, the needs of advertisement and of having signs in densely populated urban areas and transport hubs contributed to the need of creating a graphical sign language that was minimalistic and quickly and easily comprehensible by all. Neurath and his team took pictograms and developed them into an art form, albeit a form of art that was mainly concerned with the social good. To make quantitative information as aesthetically pleasing as possible was part of this wider goal.
Neurath at that time was director of the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna (which could be roughly translated as Museum for Society and Economy). Vienna had a social democrate city government. Big changes happened in society. Before the war the working classes and the urban poor had lived in intolerable conditions, often with large families crammed into small flats with shared water and toilet facilities for one whole floor of a large building. Death rates of mothers giving birth and of young childs were very high, infectuous deseases such as tuberculosis rampant. After WWI the city government of Vienna was leading the way in building social housing according to modern standards, improving sports and leisure facilities (for exampling by building some of the most beautiful indoor swimming pools, many of which are still in use) and generally improving the living conditions of all inhabitants of the city. The city government had an interest in communicating its achievements to the public and Neurath took up the challenge as director of the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum. Neurath was left-leaning himself and as a scientist member of the influential Vienna Circle who developed the philosophical theory of Logical Positivism and counted among its members many world leading scientists such as Kurt Goedel, Erwin Schroedinger, Rudolf Carnapp.
Neurath took the task he was given as director of the museum further and did not only set out to show the public how improved housing provision and better healthcare had reduced illness and death rates but also tried to educate the people about the world they lived in. A healthy democracy, he believed, could only exist if all people had a good knowledge of the political economy. But large parts of the community did hardly read any newspapers (and it is doubtful if newspapers take serious the task of 'informing' the public properly) not to speak of books about political economy, international trade and foreign relations. Neurath firmly believed that "a picture says more than a thousand words". Therefore he and his team developed ISOTYPE to inform the public about the world they lived in - in a way that is clear and simple but never condescending. ISOTYPE can almost be 'read' -- they combine aspects of typography and visualisation. Ideally a tableu produced using ISOTYPE relays a great wealth of information in a single picture and without the need to read lengthy explanations -- although it is often important to study the legend. Due to the turbulence caused by the rise of faschism Neurath and his wife had to emigrate from Austria. After a few years in the Netherlands they moved on to England. The University of Reading now houses many of the artefacts, manuscripts, visual displays, etc., that Neurath and his wife took with them when coming to England. Neurath died in 1945 of natural causes. It is maybe due to his death before postwar regeneration started that his method is now almost forgotten.
I have had an interest in ISOTYPE for a considerable time, actually since I came across it when I studied philosophy 20 years ago. Recently I contributed to a book that tried to undust Neurath and ISOTYPE and provide a path for carrying this method into the future. It occured to me that the Ports Project offered an ideal opportunity to try and apply the ISOTYPE method to data gathered during my ports related research.
Together with graphic designers yippieyeah, Gunnar Bauer and Tina Borkowski, we have started to create visual displays that show information about the ports of Southampton, Portsmouth and Poole with a focus on international trade relations, climate change and labour relations.
The Effect of Containerisation on Maritime Industry Jobs in Southampton
Number of dock workers and number of workers in maritime industry jobs compared with tonnage of goods handled
1957 1961 2002
tonnage 18.400.400,00 24.269.507,00 34.156.000,00
total number of workers 25.908,00 23.276,00 11.700,00
dock workers 2.441,00 2.410,00 500,00
executive summary: double tonnage can be handled by a fifth of dock workers and processed by
less than half of workers in port related jobs; the shrinking number of workers can be
explained by containerisation.
numbers supplied by Allan Ingham, graphic design yippieyeah.