Otto Neurath

Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath was born in Austria in 1882 and died in 1945, he was a philosopher of science, a sociologist and political economist, who was a leader in the Vienna Circle, which were a group of philosophers and scientists that regularly met at the University of Vienna between 1924 and 1936.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Neurath

He was imprisoned in 1919, for being associated with the Bavarian Communist Republic.The next year he went to Vienna to encourage political and social reform based on Marxist ideology.

Neurath had been working in Moscow during the Austrian Civil War in 1934 and realised it wasn't safe for him to return to Austria so he traveled to The Hague, in the Netherlands.He organised conferences on Scientific Philosophy and founded the Unity of Science in 1936.

He continued his international work for a time until the Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam in 1940 which forced him to flee again this time to Britain.

"Words Divide, pictures unite."

He and his future wife, Marie Neurath, created the ISOTYPE (International system of typographic picture education), which is a visual pictogram language that is the precursor to modern day information graphics.The idea was indeed philosophical by creating a visual language that could be universally understood across all languages. The idea was used to explain complex ideas and large volumes of information visually and clearly.

http://isotyperevisited.org/2012/08/introduction.html

Gerd Arntz joined Otto and Marie in The Hague, which gave Isotype its distinctive style. After seeing some of Arntz's work in an exhibition, Otto Neurath immediately recognised its suitability for Isotype. Arntz used woodcut as the principle technique for producing Isotypes because of its strong colour and reproducibility. He went on to produce visual statistics for the Social and Economic Museum of Vienna where he used linocut as the means to produce Isotypes.

http://isotyperevisited.org/2012/08/introduction.html

These three talented people created an incredible universal language that can be used to explain things like simple directions or huge sophisticated ideas that would normally take large volumes of text to explain.

Below are some examples of their work.