Class 3.31

Key points from tonight's lecture:

• Design for Information 1930’s and 1940’s..... The ISOTYPE Movement- A pictorial language to help pubic understanding of social issues related to housing, health, and economics after WWI
• Otto Neurath- founder introduced in 1936 continued into the 1940’s
• Pictorial languages– or“lexicons “for communicating information are engineered rather than illustrated.
• The ISOTYPE Movement- Led to the extensive use of pictographs in signage, identities and information graphics later in the century.
• Rudolph Modley, the most distinguished of the pupils of Otto Neurath, is know for his large and comprehensive dictionaries/handbooks of symbols.
• Designers align with the notion of engineering- objective, rational, systematic, and programmatic.
• Visual “unit” becomes the double page spread defined for function, flow, and form.
• Design for Information: data integration from multiple sources
• Watched Helvetica the movie

In tonight's lecture, we began the third unit of the course. We began by learning about the isotype, where it came from, how it came to be, and what it is. The isotype is a visual language that led to the use of pictographs in signage, identities, and information graphics that came later in the century. The lecture tonight also touched upon how designers became more like engineers in that they used rational and systematic thinking to design for function, flow, and form.

During the second half of the lecture, we watched the movie Helvetica. I have never seen this documentary, but I have always wanted to, so it was interesting to watch. I learned a lot about why it is one of the best, if not the best, designed typeface. It was really interesting to see how one would go about designing a typeface as well, as one of the people in the movie talked about. He said that he would start with an "h" because it has a straight line and a curve and then follow that with an "o". After that, he said he would design a "p" because it has a straight line, curve, and a descender. Then, from that, a kind of DNA is produced and you can get the letters "u, n, d, q, etc."