Otto Neurath

http://www.designhistory.org/Symbols_pages/isotype.html

Known as the creator of the ISOTYPE system, Otto Neurath was a brilliant philosopher that created a visual for his science and ideals. From an early age he was interested with different forms and how pictures could have so much meaning to them without a single word. During the 1920’s Neurath was apart of a group called the Logical Positivists. They believed that the only philosophies that mattered were derived from the sciences and mathematics. While trying to display social information for his museum he wanted to create a system that involved nothing but pictures. From these pictures it would display the information he needed without any words. Thus the ISOTYPE system was born. Using this visual communication, Neurath was able to display different types of information repeating images and creating charts with these illustrations.