=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3888/paper2
|storemode=property
|title=Generalized Between Icon, Symbol and Index: The Physical Dimension in Isotype and
Unicode
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3888/Paper_2.pdf
|volume=Vol-3888
|authors=Sandra Neugaertner
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/isd2/Neugaertner24
}}
==Generalized Between Icon, Symbol and Index: The Physical Dimension in Isotype and
Unicode==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3888/Paper_2.pdf
Generalized Between Icon, Symbol and Index: The
Physical Dimension in Isotype and Unicode
Sandra Neugaertner1
1
Leuphana University Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany
Abstract
Pictograms are components of the visual language systems of ancient cultures in Egypt and Mesoamerica
as well as in modern pictorial statistics and applications of the Unicode system in our computerized present.
The term “pictogram” or “pictograph” (from Latin pictum “painted”, “picture” and ancient Greek γράφειν
gráphein, English “to write”) indicates that the icon and the symbol are conjoined and function together.
The paper looks at different applications of pictograms and explores their relationship to and understanding
as image schemas. Starting with the Isotype, a pictorial-static method developed by Otto Neurath, and
taking into account its artistic origin and specific production process, it is shown that pictograms such as
the Isotype integrate not only icon and symbol, but also the indexical sign. This is not only of fundamental
importance with regard to the question of the power associated with the increasing organizational
abstraction of pictograms through textual logics, but also the strongest connection can be made here to
image schema that are based on the sensorimotor experiences of the body with the environment. The value
of the indexical sign is important precisely because it is diametrically opposed to coding. Thus, the analysis
of the states of the sign, drawing on the semiotics of de Saussure and Peirce, aims to examine the
phenomenon of formal to technical reduction in greater detail. To this end, the reference to hieroglyphic
writing (which Neurath himself did), to the Huexotzinco Codex, and finally to the application of Unicode
pictograms will be discussed. The work of artist Marcel Schwittlick will be discussed as an example of how
coded Unicode pictograms are used as a reference for exploring new means of machine-based artistic
practice.
Keywords
Image schema, pictogram, pictograph, pictorial statistics, Vienna method, Isotype, Cologne Progressives,
Huexotzinco Codex, Unicode, sign theory, coded, index, physical 1
1. Semiological Categorization
The paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan has shown that visual art is inextricably linked to
language and has its origins in the constitution of an intellectual pair, namely the formation of
sounds and signs. However, the development of linear type led to the separation of art and writing
or — in the semiological dimension — to the splitting of human-cultural expression into the iconic
and the symbolic category. In order to return to a visualization that was and is common to all peoples,
Leroi-Gourhan proposes to mobilize all the forces of abstraction [1]. This proposal is similar to the
strategies that Otto Neurath (1882-1945) formulated and pursued from the mid-1920s with the Vienna
method of pictorial statistics.
Neurath, who is also known for his political involvement in the Munich Soviet Republic, the
Vienna Settlement Movement and the Austrian Social Democracy, developed the Vienna method as
the first pictorial statistic of its kind to illustrate sociological, statistical facts [2]. Its establishment is
linked to the founding of the “Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum” (GeWiMu) in Vienna, whose
director Neurath became at the beginning of 1925. The integration of displays with pictorial statistics
The Eight Image Schema Day (ISD8), 25–28 November 2024, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
sandra.neugaertner@leuphana.de (S. Neugaertner)
0000-0001-8629-8466 (S. Neugaertner)
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its author. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
according to Neurath’s method was the essential and characteristic feature of this new type of
museum (Fig. 1).2
Figure 1: Activity Report of the City of Vienna’s Career Advice Office, 1929. GeWiMu.
Neurath’s recourse to pictorial signs, which had been developed at the GeWiMu in a laborious search
for reduced, abstract, adequate forms (Fig. 2), was a step backward in palaeographic terms, but all
the same an advance in the unique inclusion of semiological categories. To describe the Viennese
method of pictorial statistics, Neurath introduced the term Isotype in 1934, an acronym for
“International System of Typographic Picture Education”. This name suggests not only the
educational purpose, but also hints at the connection between the two sign states: “Typographic”
points to the category of symbol, “Picture” to that of icon. Likewise, terms such as “pictorial
language”, “pictogram” and “pictograph” (from Latin pictum “painted”, “picture” and ancient Greek
γράφειν gráphein, English “to write”) indicate that icon and symbol enter into a connection and
operate together. And indeed, while the meanings of the pictorial-statistical pictograms as symbolic
signs were determined by convention, as iconic signs they were at the same time similar to the
original object to which they referred and thus not entirely arbitrary or capricious. In fact, they
function neither as completely iconic nor as completely symbolic signs, but rather on the borderline
between the two categories of signs.
Neurath developed his pictorial statistical method in parallel to the semiological and
structural linguistic movements, within which the question was posed: What is the source of
meaning; what generates meaning in language? As a general interest in science and society at the
time, such questions were posed both in the United States in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce
2
The “Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum” in Vienna and its “Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics” soon became
known and recognized first in Vienna and then worldwide. It took part in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad with
its pictorial statistics panels, e.g. in 1926 for the municipality of Vienna and the Austrian social insurance institutes at the
major exhibition for “Gesundheit, Soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübung” [Health, Social Welfare and Physical Exercise],
GESOLEI in Düsseldorf and in the same year at the first major urban planning exhibition in Vienna; in 1928, for example,
at the Housing and Urban Planning Congress in Paris and at the Pressa in Cologne, and in 1931 at the International
Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden. It also produced illustrated panels for other museums, including the Museum of Science
and Industry in Chicago. In addition, articles by Neurath and his colleagues with illustrated statistics appeared in
magazines ranging from the “Wiener Gemeindezeitung” to Survey Graphic in New York, the most important magazine in
the field of social work in America at the time. A separate institute, the “Mundaneum Institute”, was founded in 1932 for
international work, with branches in Vienna and The Hague.
(1839-1914), who generated the first theory of signs, and by the Swiss semiologist Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857-1913) and the Russian semiologists in St. Petersburg and Moscow, such as Viktor
Šklovskij (1893 greg.-1984), and Czechoslovakia, such as Roman Jakobson (1896 greg.-1982), who had
an outstanding influence on the development of linguistic structuralism.3 Semiotics and linguistics,
with their interest in the genesis of meaning and linguistic standardization, are scientific movements
that took place parallel to Neurath’s development of pictorial statistics and must be considered in
conjunction with it. The overarching question was how meanings and relationships between objects
or events are conveyed, and in the specific case of pictorial statistics, how a high degree of abstraction
makes sign systems applicable to a wide range of contexts. This gives rise to questions about the
universality verus conventionality of visual languages.
I propose that by abstracting signs to elementary forms and symbols that are organized and
represent complex information in simple and comprehensible images, pictorial statistics based on
the Vienna Method reveal connections to visual representations of image schemas. Image schemas
make visible how the patterns of recurring structures in our cognitive processes are anchored in our
experience and perception and determine our patterns of understanding and reasoning [3] [4]. While
it must be emphasized that they do neither abstract reality nor generate meaning (as pictorial
statistics do), but rather abstract our experience of reality, the representations of image schemas bear
surprising analogies to the Isotype. Because of their organization, the visualized image schemas in
Figure 3 may refer to path, center-periphery, and, I would argue, as a conceptual metaphor for
hierarchy. The organizational charts of a family tree (Fig. 4) and a company (Fig. 5) implement similar
conceptions in a more detailed way. Figures standing together naturally suggest a couple, and the
top-down organization makes the temporal process or hierarchy clear. While they refer to social
relations, they are compressed generalizations of particular spatio-temporal relations that could be
derived from repeated embodied experience, and thus, following Maria Hedblom’s characterization
of image schemas, bear crucial links to it [3].
The charts from the ‘Fighting Tuberculosis’ exhibition produced by Neurath’s enterprise for
the National Tuberculosis Association in the USA in 1938 (Fig. 6 and 7) may suggest the
implementation of some schematic value. But above all, they are narrative and function in exactly
opposite direction to image schemas. The charts are intentionally created for a purpose, while image
schemas do not have to be developed first but are already anchored in people’s minds.
The crucial distinguishing point is therefor, whether we are dealing with a form of
communication that aims to convey an argument (socio-economic or other), or with an illustration
of what is present anyway, without the manifestation being linked to a specific intention [3, 4, 5]. In
contrast to image schemas, pictorial statistics are based to a large extent on conventions. This means
that they are accepted by a definable group of people. Image schemas, on the other hand, are readable
and valid for everyone because they are based on sensory-motor experiences that we have with our
environment [3]. These are, so to speak, physical rather than cultural foundations. It is about the
distinction between physics and culture, between natural determination and intentional, cultural
determination.
A resulting question is whether this sensorimotor basis still applies exclusively to the visual
representations of image schemas? Or do the effects of culture creep in through the search for the
best possible representation? Just recall the family tree and company charts, which show that there
is room for maneuver on both sides in terms of representation. And so it is with the Isotype: The
more detailed the shapes are, the less abstract they are, the more culture has flowed into them, which
means that they are more determined by convention (see Fig. 8).
3
While Charles Sanders Peirce, whose “What is a Sign?”, published in 1894, was a representative of behaviorist sign
theory and, like his successor Charles William Morris, distinguished between syntactics, semantics and pragmatics,
Ferdinand de Saussure, who published “cours de linguistique générale” in 1916, was the main representative of the
second branch — structuralist sign theory, which developed from the approaches of Viktor Šklovskij, Roman Jakobson
and colleagues and was continued by Roland Barthes, among others.
Figure 3: Outline silhouette organization
structure (family tree).
Figure 2: Gerd Arntz’s variations on male pictograms for
Neurath’s “Bildlexikon”, GeWiMu/Arthur Wolf Verlag.
Figure 4: Pictogram organization structure Figure 5: Pictogram organization structure
(family tree). (company).
Figures 6–7:
Charts from the
“Fighting
Tuberculosis”
exhibition produced
for The National
Tuberculosis
Association in the
USA, 1938:
Tuberculosis spreads
in the household; and
Tuberculosis germs
are passed from
person to person in
many ways. University
of reading, Otto and
Maria Neurath Isotype
Collection.
Figure 8: “Millions of working women were educated. The USSR is a country of female equality”.
Pictorial statistics by the Isostat Institute, 1938; GPIB Collection.
Figure 9: Isotype in Mexico, early 1940s. Figure 10: Isotype in USSR (Isostat
Institut), 1930s.
At the same time, just as the visualizations of the image schemas must be circumscribed in
terms of their alleged non-culturality, a concession must be made to the pictorial statistics: they too
convey certain contents and concepts on the basis of shared experiences and perceptions of a so to
speak non-specific culture. It must be emphasized that Neurath attempted with the pictorial statistics
to reduce culturally anchored components to a minimum by striving for general applicability, in
other words for universality (see Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 compared to Fig. 8). These displays strive
practically for what is inherently present in the image schemas. Through abstraction, cultural
limitations were at least minimized.
Neurath intended to introduce a globally valid alphabet of pictorial symbols that could be
understood across social and national borders without much explanatory text and thus largely
independent of the respective national language. Neurath’s encyclopaedic goals according to which
he was concerned with the construction of a scientific corpus that would enable the cooperation of
as many disciplines as possible in terms of scientific logic and terminology [6], culminated in the
mid-1920s in an extensive collection of symbols already in use, the Thesaurus, which was to serve as
the basis for his international visual language [7]. At the same time, Neurath was aware of the
constraints of such an undertaking, as he aptly put it: “Of course, a ‘worldwide universal visual
language’ always had to remain an unfulfillable dream, because in most countries in Africa or Asia
the typical unemployed person is dressed differently than in this symbol, but the symbolic visual
language could make many things directly understandable to many viewers over wide areas and in
many countries” [7]. Neurath’s Thesaurus correspond in its interest in unification to the nature of
image schemas. Both are not detailed, but rather template-like concepts that are linked to linguistic
expressions. With the reality-abstracting structures of his new sign system, Neurath was in fact
striving for a new cognitive pattern formation that would function analogously or as a substitute for
the linguistic alphabet and would be learned in the same way as linguistic patterns are formed in
children during language acquisition.
With the claim to create a new language system with universal readability through
abstraction and systematization, the Thesaurus also shows a proximity to the goals of Gestalt
psychology of Kurt Grelling and Paul Oppenheim, the representatives of the Berlin Circle, which
they expressed in connection with the concept of Gestalt: “Ultimately, our work serves the
standardization of scientific language and thus the logical ideal of the unity of science” [8]. However,
Neurath tended to push for a standardized physical language (which explains the relationship with
image schemas, as will be shown). Steffen Kluck states that Neurath will have seen Gestalt
psychology as a way of overcoming linguistic diversification in the individual sciences, especially as
“the physical correlates of phenomenal forms can of course be easily integrated into a unified
physical science” [9].4
As a representative of empiricism and logic, Neurath developed his own theory of science,
which he called “physicalism”, claiming that “in a sense unified science is physics in its largest aspect,
a tissue of laws expressing space-time linkages” [10]. Assuming that “physicalism” influenced the
genesis of the Isotype, Peirce’s sign theory, which, in contrast to de Saussure’s linguistic sign theory,
also deals with the extra-linguistic sign category — the indexical sign — is highly applicable to the
analysis of the Isotype. The indexical sign is defined by a physical connection to those objects of
which it shows something. In other words, Neurath’s “physicalism” and conviction that all science
is based on the experience and observation of concrete phenomena are the very links to the image
schemas, which are described by George Lakoff as “relatively simple structures that constantly recur
in our everyday bodily experience: containers, paths, links, forces, balance, and in various
orientations and relations: up-down, front-back, part-whole, center-periphery, etc. These structures
are directly and repeatedly experienced because of the nature of the body and its mode of functioning
in our environment” [11]. The Isotype may enact laws that relate to image schemas, for instance by
4
Accordingly, Neurath did not have a strictly negative attitude towards the Berlin School, he just wanted to free Gestalt
psychology from metaphysical elements.
establishing connections between objects or events on the basis of patterns that have been shaped as
such by recurring bodily experiences.
The Isotype not only functions like iconic signs and at the same time acts symbolically since
it simultaneously abstracts reality and generates meaning qua convention; beyond this, is also
activates the indexical sign value as a relationship to reality exists. The indexical sign is defined by
a physical connection to the objects of which it shows something. But since this relationship is only
indirect, we are not dealing here with no easily identifiable, “normal” indexical sign category, but
rather so-called “degenerated indices” [12]. According to Peirce, the index is a sign that can also have
“merely” a causal connection to an object. Accordingly, the physical object connection can also be
determined via the capacity for indication. Against this background, physical connection does not
necessarily mean direct physical contact, something that Sigrid Weigel has emphasized in her
seminal article “Indexikalische Bilder. Spur, Ähnlichkeit und Codierung. Peirce’ Semiotik —
bildtheoretisch gewendet” from 2015 [13]. Peirce himself offers the broadest possible definition when
he formulates that the index is a sign whose reference to the designated object is based on being
“really affected” by it [14]. This affection can also be triggered, as in the case with the Isotype, on a
cognitive level.
To summarize, the combination of all three sign categories means that the Isotype is
embedded in our social structure and value systems, but not exclusively and completely like linear
letter fonts, because it is at the same time related to sign systems whose meanings are quite “natural”
and unavoidable. The latter fosters its connection to image schemas, since both reveal that we live
and are connected to physical objects and events.
2. Artistic and Technical Requirements
Looking at the artistic origin of Neurath’s Isotype it becomes clear how the connection to physical
objects and events is even established in the genesis itself. In From Hieroglyphics to Isotypes: A Visual
Autobiography, Neurath describes the difficulties that almost all of the collaborators involved in
form-finding had to overcome: “... some of them worked very hard to get away from the various
painting techniques of the day, which tended either towards realism or towards a kind of
expressionism — that is, toward lines and color effects more akin to musical expressionism, without
any informative element in it” [4]. Among the co-developers, however, was Gerd Arntz (1900-1988),
an artist who did not have to adapt first, but whose artistic expression was already so developed
before the collaboration that it anticipated Neurath’s stylistic ideas of pictorial statistics: “It was an
exception when a painter called Gerd Arntz, before he came in contact with our work, tried to use
simplified representations of human beings, animals, machine etc. in his own work. Such a man was
of course particularly well qualified to play a considerable part in forming the Isotype style, which
is of importance as well as the Isotype vocabulary and the Isotype grammar, if one is allowed to use
these terms in such a context” [4]. Arntz belonged to the Cologne Progressive artists’ group, which
had gathered around Franz W. Seiwert (1894-1933) in the early 1920s and whose political home was
located between pacifism, socialism, communism and anarchism. The figures and objects in the
works of these artists are characterized by the compressed, stencil-like character. They thus contrast
the style of painterly representation of other artists, for whom, as Neurath explained, exorbitant lines
and colorfulness were characteristic.
Two issues of a bis z, a magazine of the Progressives, edited by Heinrich Hoerle, demonstrate not
only the reception of the Isotype, but also the formal-technical parallels of the pictorial statistics (No.
8 from May 1930; see Fig. 11) and the artworks by the Progressive artists depicting the proletarian
as a reduced schema (No. 12 from November 1930; see Fig. 12). The Cologne Progressives created
almost exclusively woodcuts and linocuts. This not only set them apart from the technics of
Expressionism, to which most of the Cologne Progressives had previously belonged and which they
then rejected, but also from the New Objectivist artists who were ideologically close to the
Progressives, but worked realistically and also distanced themselves from the pathos of
Expressionism through their sober, objective style of representation. But it was only through the
consistency of the printing technique that the most consistent, diametrical departure from ornate,
subjective lines and brushwork was achieved. And these print media corresponded perfectly with
the production process of the Isotype symbols. Neurath explains: “When we started, simple symbols
were drawn rather realistically, but by using a new technique they soon become simplified without
becoming less self-explanatory. We cut out the symbols — little silhouettes of cows, goats, potatoes,
plougs and human beings — from colored paper, thus reducing the outlines to a minimum and of
course avoiding internal lines wherever possible. This simplification led us to prepare little blocks
from which we printed the symbols that we wanted to paste on the charts we were exhibiting. The
combination of these developments led us to a style of our won, which enabled us to pass from
technical or biological drawings to statistical or organizational ones without altering our rules or our
technique of presentation” [4].
Figure 11: Frontpage of a bis z, Vol. 2, No. 8 Figure 12: Frontpage of a bis z, Vol. 2, No.
(May 1930). 12 (November 1930).
The importance of the stencil like character becomes especially clear when looking at pictorial
statistics that did not exactly follow the Vienna method in terms of abstraction. Their shapes are
related to the painterly representations (see Fig. 13). The Isotype in its foundation in the printing
technique, stands out in terms of reducing detail to the bare minimum. No painterly movements
were technically able to achieve this factual, physical degree of abstraction — regardless of whether
they worked as objectively, or abstractly as possible. Their works were always interpretations of
reality. In contrast, the Cologne Progressives intended and technically achieved a condensation of
form according to a symbolic language. They were concerned with formulating a sign of the
oppressed, the proletarian as an economically conditioned schema. They identified a sign language
as the most symbolic form of expression and thus created a kind of “icon of the oppressed proletariat”
(Fig. 14). The pictograms of the Isotype adopted these proceedings that resulted in stencil-like
cogwheels as a sign for industry or the pictorial sign of a hammer for craftsmanship (Fig. 15).
Figure 13: Aleksandr
Rodchenko, The Death
of Lenin, 1924 (1924
Smert’ Lenina), Poster
No. 25 of 25 from the
series The History of
the All-Union Commu-
nist Party (of Bolshe-
vics) in (lstoria VKP[b]
v plakatakh), c. 1926,
Merill C. Berman Col-
lection.
Figure 14: Heinrich Hörle,
Arbeiter mit Hammer.
Figure 15: Economic system
of the earth, Bildstatistisches
Elementarwerk, 1930, Leipzig.
As outlined in the previous section, the indexical character value should be taken into
account when specifying the Isotype, and the printing technique is a phenomenological clue here.
Woodcuts and linocuts are letterpress printing processes in which a relief-like printing block is
produced to create graphics. The formalistic concept of facture, which is related to the indexical sign,
makes the difference between such a printing process and painterly techniques clear. Defined as “the
nature and appearance, the sensually perceptible imprint (the effect) of the work process, which is
evident in every treatment of the material”, the facture in a print is extremely even and uniform, and
thus objective, in contrast to the individual — subjective — brushstrokes of pigment painting, which
leave a tactile trace [15]. Corresponding to the indirectness of the physical reference to reality of the
“degenerated indices”, the physical influence is only indirect through the previously produced
printing block, in which a stencil-like texture was generated by massive impact with a chisel. The
print involves this indirect physical influence, which can no longer be experienced tactilely, but still
cognitively. This again suggests the close connection of the Isotype to image schemas, which also
cognitively abstract our bodily or physical experience of reality. As is well known, the Vienna
method no longer relied on prints but on the technique of silhouettes. Nevertheless, it can be argued
that silhouettes have a texture that is similarly flat and even as that of a print, which at best
emphasizes the edges as form-giving boundaries instead of the lines that fill the boundary to hatch
surfaces. What the drawing is to painting in terms of the translation of pigment color application to
line hatching, the silhouette is as a stencil-like analog to the print.
The uniformity provoked by the stencil-printing can be stated phenomenologically not only
for the tactile, but also for the visual experience: The color values, which are indeterminate in
painting (indeterminate because color gradients are generated in painterly processes — with the
exception of constructivist and suprematist works), are reduced to singular units in silhouette and
printing processes. Analogously, the statistical symbols also function monochromatically — and not
only within the surface of a specific symbol, but within the entire system the color spectrum is
reduced and coded symbolically. Neurath explains: “In Isotype the colors play an important part. It
is not always possible to reproduce a color Isotype in shades of black and white without reducing
the richness of an argument or even destroying its main point. We may reduce the outline of a
symbol to a minimum, but the colors remain essential in many cases.” [4]. Accordingly, symbols
should have the same color and be used for the same or similar contexts. The “viewer, after having
seen a large number of such pictorial-statistical panels, [... would] more or less automatically become
attuned … to associate certain symbols and colors with certain ideas and thus grasp even more
quickly what it might be about” [7]. This quote makes it clear that the spectrum of forms and colors
generated in this way not only drew on the conventions of the current culture, but also sought to
create new (more universally valid) conventions. In addition, printing and paper-cutting processes
fulfilled the technical requirements for the development of the symbol system, which also enabled
the reusability of the pictorial symbols in terms of process technology. The monochromatic color
values and reusable stencil shapes ensured technical reproducibility — in contrast to individual
painting processes.
Statisticians, economists, social scientists, geographers and social insurance specialists were
also involved in the development of the pictograms of the Vienna method/the Isotype. However, it
is obvious that Neurath, whose private collection included several prints by the Cologne
Progressives,5 was first and foremost dependent on the fundamental influence that Arntz exerted on
the form-finding process. It was only through the technical and artistic achievements of the Cologne
Progressives that the pictorial statistics arrived at the specific style. Neurath had met Arntz in 1926
at the Exhibition for Health, Social Welfare and Physical Exercise (GESOLEI) in Düsseldorf and was
able to engage him to work permanently at the GeWiMu in Vienna [3]. In a bis z Arntz had finally
established the link between his artistic work and Neurath’s pictorial statistics himself: “The more
5
For example, Neurath’s collection included “Helft der Internationalen Arbeiterhilfe” (1924) and “Menschen im
Gefängnis” (1924) by Seiwert as well as “Hinrichtung” (1928) and “Zum Walfisch” (1930) by Augustin Tschinkel.
clearly a thing is worked out, the more clearly it proves that it ultimately has its meaning only in its
application for the general public, and the more open this meaning becomes through its good form,
the more it urges the overthrow of its position in contemporary life. It is the same with statistics”
[16].6
As with the visualization of image schema, where we find a natural process of abstraction
implicit in the theory of embodied cognition in a three-fold form of apparition of embodied
experience – mental manifestation – symbolic representation [3], we find the “omission of all
naturalistic or otherwise superfluous decorative additions,” albeit through controlled processes made
possible or necessary by the printing or cutting procedure [7]. This led to a three- or four-step
approach to legibility as the underlying rule at the reception level, which Neurath defined in a lecture
at an international conference of architects and urban planners with the following principles: “At
first glance, the most important thing must be recognizable; at second glance, additional necessary
details; at third glance, the relationship involved; if a fourth glance is necessary, then the picture is
bad” [17]. Both the Progressives with their artistic stencil forms and Neurath with the pictograms of
his pictorial-statistic method succeeded in creating an image-schematic communication system that
was captivating, memorable and at the same time comprehensible. It captivated through its indirect,
physical reference, it was comprehensible through its functioning on the border between iconic and
symbolic sign value and it was memorable through the joint effect of all three of Peirce’s sign
categories.
3. From Hieroglyphics to Unicode
Neurath’s interest in pre-linear writing is well documented. In addition to his preoccupation with
children’s drawings, he also studied hieroglyphic writing as part of his theorization of the Isotype.
He argued that there “are some differences between hieroglyphics and Isotype. As I have already
stated, the fine and clear shape of Egyptian hieroglyphics degenerated gradually into black or cursive
characters, without any pictorial features. Hieroglyphics did not use very much color as an essential
element of the visual language; the symbols were made in such a way that the bas-relief inscription
did not differ considerably from the painted texts” [18]. Hieroglyphics tended to share more with
arbitrary symbols, namely letters, than with images. The fact that colors had little significance
strengthens this argument. “One can see immediately the difference between Isotype and Egyptian
hieroglyphics. We tried not to present more details than are needed for quickly grasping the main
points of a picture, whereas the Egyptian painters did not think it sufficient when representing
different kinds of slaves or princes to rely on, say, colour alone (indicating brown or black people)
but very often added details …” [18].
The significance of the coding becomes even more clear when looking at the pictorial writing
system of the Nahua indigenous people, namely the Huexotzinco Codex (see Fig. 16). The
Huexotzinco Codex is an important historical artifact from Mesoamerica dating back to 1531, which
records a history of indigenous resistance to colonial taxation as well as religion, agricultural
patterns and local political structures. The eight-sheet document contains pictorial visualizations of
tribute payments as part of a testimony in a court case against representatives of the colonial
government in Mexico ten years after the Spanish conquest in 1521. Huexotzinco is a town southeast
of Mexico City in the state of Puebla. In 1521, the Nahua Indians of the city were allies of the Spanish
conquistador Hernando Cortés, and together they fought against their enemies to defeat Moctezuma,
the leader of the Aztec empire. Between 1529 and 1530, when Cortés was out of the country, the
6
For a detailed account of the interpretation of the work of the Cologne Progressives, see also my essay From Revolution
to Reformation: From the Figurative Constructivism of the Cologne Progressives to Léna Meyer-Bergner’s Isotype in
Mexico as Anti-imperialist Strategy, 1920-1946, in: B. Buchloh (Ed.), From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett:
Exchange of Political Print Culture. Germany-Mexico, 1900-1968, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia/TF.
Editores, Madrid, 2022, pp. 400–417.
Spanish colonial administrators interfered in the daily activities of the community and forced the
Nahuas to pay excessive taxes in the form of goods and services. The Nahuas eventually sued against
the abuses of the Spanish administrators.
Figure 16: Huexotzinco Codex,
Huexotzinco, Mexico, 1531, Hark-
ness Collection, 1525-1651, The
Library of Congress.
The Huexotzinco Codex demonstrates how pictograms made it possible to overcome
linguistic barriers and to visualize the grievances of the Spanish administration. Instead of coding by
color, the figures of the Huexotzinco Codex are characterized by different degrees of structuring of
the garments, which encodes group affiliations. But what is more, In clear proximity to the Isotype,
a set of certain pictorial symbols represents an exact number of objects. Analogous to Neurath’s
method, the repetition of pictograms of the same size marks corresponding quantities — instead of
scaling the symbols (see Fig. 13). Of course Neurath’s method included “merely the translation of
long rows of numbers and statistical tables into the famous ‘rows of little men’, but a carefully
elaborated system of pictorial pedagogy in which these ‘rows of little men’, or more precisely: the
juxtaposition of identical symbols of the same size in each case, whereby quantities of different sizes
are indicated by different numbers of the same symbols of the same size in each case, do indeed
occupy their significant and of course immediately eye-catching place — but only as part of the
overall system, in which other elements also play a significant role. The decisive factor here is the
arrangement of the symbols” [7]. However, in a timeless interface, I would argue, the Huexotzinco
Codex and Neurath’s Isotype share an underlying rule or concept, namely that of a bodily experience
in terms of organizing, collecting, counting that we have as children with the objects around us,
independent of any culture. It is the same criteria that is of interest, finally, with a view to the more
recent applications of pictogram — namely the Unicode pictograms — that will be discussed
regarding the previously developed interface between Isotype and image schema with respect to
embodied cognition.
Unicode is a character encoding standard for all writing systems on the computer, which
was developed in the 1980s under the significant influence of Joseph D. Becker and adopted as an
official standard in 1991. As of version 15 in 2023, it contains a total of 149,813 characters. This
system, which aims to unite all the world’s characters in a single coding standard, also includes
pictographs, which have been included in the Unicode block “Miscellanous Symbols and
Pictographs” since October 2010. Pictograms form the basis, which is analog in the case of the Isotype
and digital in the case of Unicode pictograms. The pictogram system of the Vienna Method of
Pictographic Statistics was also encoded in Unicode [19].
Looking at the large number of unreadable symbols from the collection of more than 100,000
coded characters of the Unicode system, it once again becomes clear where Neurath saw the value
of the Isotype: pictograms have the advantage that they can usually be understood directly without
having to learn a specific language. As has been shown at the beginning, sign languages operate on
the boundary between iconic and symbolic sign categories. As has also been demonstrated, in
pictograms of the pictorial statistics according to the Vienna method the indexical category is also
present, namely through the fact of being affected by a physical experience. This argument I have
been trying to strengthen on the physical basis of bodily experience which again is a link to image
schemas. In other words, the functioning of the Isotype is not only dependent on conventions but
simultaneously applies patterns or laws of cognitive and conceptual meaning based on the body’s
sensorimotor interactions with the environment.
With regard to the Unicode system, however, it must be realized that the universal
systematic coding of the textual dimension, which is formative in administrative, logistical terms, in
turn initiates a massive counterpoint to the iconic and indexical dimensions the phenomenology of
pictorial signs so special. In the Unicode system, characters — including pictograms — are managed
by encrypted systems. They are represented in a hexadecimal code point consisting of four digits.
This code point is a unique value assigned to each Unicode character (in addition to hexadecimal,
there are other types of encoding: decimal, HTML encoding, URL encoding (PHP), etc.). The
boundary where the pictorial and realistic ends and the textual/symbolic begins is thus shifted to the
administrative level. No longer suitable for direct human readability, the question of power is
determined by the administrative apparatus and its systematics. The overall system of the Unicode
also makes it clear that characters and symbols are incorporated into the same textual register.
The interest of the Berlin-based artist Marcel Schwittlick in the Unicode pictograms with
regard to his artistic practice may be rooted in precisely this tension between coding/administration
and physical reference/phenomenology. Not only does the artistic design of the Unicode pictograms
strive for the most reduced form — in the sense of a most efficient variant in terms of the number of
pixels (Fig. 17) — but Schwittlick also returns the pixel to embossed paper (Fig. 18). Instead of visually
perceptible prints, he opts for a tactile experience of the Unicode pictograms as a complete departure
from the screen pixels, which are, as it were, removed from the administration of the virtual art
market by being unique.
Figure 17: Marcel Schwittlick, Unicode
landscape (snow capped mountain 🏔 u+1f3d4;
camping 🏕 u+1f3d5; beach with umbrella 🏖
u+1f3d6; desert island 🏝 u+1f3dd; desert 🏜
u+1f3dc; national park 🏞 u+1f3de), 2024.
Figure 18: Marcel Schwittlick,
Desert Island 🏝 u+1f3dd, 2024,
Embossed paper,
Unique, signed on verso.
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