![]() “International Picture Language”, Otto Neurath, 1936, p.97 What pictorial chart type to choose This phenomena is better explained on the image below. But how much larger? This question will get no answer from the eye by itself.” The only decision it is able to make is “this plane is larger than that”. But the eye is completely unable to make a comparison between planes (for example) in a precise way. “The eye is able to make a comparison between amounts of signs,” Neurath explains, “ and it is able to see how much longer one line is than another. However, the size comparison approach is considered a bad practice by some people. “International Picture Language”, Otto Neurath, 1936, p.75 The r elative sizes or repetitions of the same icon, picture, or symbol shows the relationships between data points. Since then pictorials are widely used to compare data. “International Picture Language”, Otto Neurath, 1936, p.39 Data visualization best practices This fact gives the ISOTYPE system a special value for all sorts of education.” As Neurath explains: “To most men the reading of long lines of numbers is a great trouble – they put down a book when they see it has in it numbers or curves. The familiar shapes of pictorials laid out to represent their mutual relationships and narratives was the most effective way to teach, provide instructions or report on essential statistics. The beginning of the 20th century in Europe saw a lot of social class disputes and wars, therefore it was essential to inform and educate large masses of illiterate people. Together, they were the perfect fit to develop an ISOTYPE (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education) – a set of 4000 pictograms that could express almost anything. Arntz was a socially inspired and politically committed artist who depicted the life of workers and the class struggle in abstract figures on woodcuts. At the time Neurath had developed a method to communicate complex information on society, economy and politics in simple images. The idea of the universal language of pictorials was best developed by an Austrian social scientist Otto Neurath and a German designer Gerd Arntz in the late 1920’s. “Graphic Presentation” by Willard C.Brinton, 1930 Ideographic drawings, pictograms, figurative symbols, pictographic charts and hieroglyphs all serve to tell stories in a universal graphical language. The “graphic narrative”, as Willard Cope Brinton calls it in his book “ Graphic Presentation ” (1939), has been around since the Stone Age. The history of pictorial chart goes hand in hand with the evolution of humanity. Here, we provide some insight into how pictorials work and how to make the best use of them. Abstract bars, lines, pie and bubble charts can get daunting without the familiar pictorials that bring every data-driven story to life.
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