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Panel Discussion at IEEE VIS 2025 in Vienna (Nov 2-7, 2025)
TBA: Carousel of Isotype Example images?
One hundred years after Otto Neurath’s team introduced ISOTYPE (O. Neurath, 1940, 2010; M. Neurath, 1974) — a pioneering method of pictorial statistics designed to make complex data accessible to broad audiences (Nemeth & Stadler, 1996; Nemeth 2019) — this panel examines their vision with fresh eyes. Hosted in Vienna, the birthplace of ISOTYPE (An acronym for International System of Typographic Picture Education), and at a moment when visualization’s role in public discourse is more urgent than ever, this panel aims to reflect on the legacy and relevance of ISOTYPE.
What does ``visualization for the masses'' (Nino Zambrano & Engelhardt, 2008) mean today in an age of data, algorithmic personalization, and fragmented attention? What have we learned from ISOTYPE’s collaborative design approach and its icon-based visual language, and how does its legacy reverberate in today's visualization projects (Burns et al., 2021, Haroz et al., 2015, Moaris et al., 2022, Schreder et al., 2018, Wu et al., 2021)? Conversely, how would Neurath's team have been influenced by current work on inclusive design, evaluation, data journalism, or interaction paradigms?
Bringing together historians of visualization, philosophers, designers, critical practitioners, and exhibition curators, the panel aims to connect past and present and situate ISOTYPE within a broader reflection on ``visualization for the public'' — from democratic communication to visual propaganda, from iconic minimalism to data storytelling for broad audiences.
This panel is related to prior panel discussions at VIS, e.g., on the ``Past, Present, and Future of Data Storytelling'' (2024), on ``Reflecting on Visualization History to Drive Future Innovation'' (2021), or ``Visualization for Social Good'' (2020). It complements earlier thematic discussions by providing direct engagement with ISOTYPE as a historical phenomenon with tangible artifacts and a documented visualization design process, that still informs modern practice.
Relevance for the VIS community
Relevance for the VIS community
At IEEE VIS we would like to bring the work and legacy of Otto Neurath and his team to the forefront of the visualization community. Their contributions extend beyond the well-known pictorial charts used to communicate economic and societal facts to broad audiences through large-scale static visualization panels (Jansen, 2009; Hartmann, 2017). Central to their practice was the systematic development of a visual communication method — eventually formalized as the so-called ``Viennese Method'' (Neurath, 2010) — hose iterative refinement and theoretical grounding still resonate with modern visualization scholarship and practice. Importantly, ISOTYPE was not only a specific design style, but a methodological framework rooted in a multidisciplinary team structure that included different roles: The scientist with expertise in the data and content, the transformer responsible for developing the didactic concepts to be used, and the graphics designer (or visualization designer) tasked with creating the visual representation of the selected data along the didactic concepts.
The work on ISOTYPE is multifaceted and rich in connections to contemporary visualization research. Its relevance is reflected in contributions presented and discussed at some of our top visualization venues, including work on ISOTYPE itself (Alebri et al. 2024; Borkin et al. 2013, 2016; Pedersen, 2017; Setlur & Mackinlay, 2014), unit charts (Park et al., 2018), on pictographs (Burns et al., 2022), or on anthropographics (Morais et al., 2022).
Just as the legacy of Jacques Bertin was revisited at IEEE VIS 2014 in Paris, the 100th anniversary of ISOTYPE provides a timely opportunity to spotlight Otto Neurath and his team — not only to celebrate their achievements, but to engage critically with their ideas in light of modern visualization challenges. The panel aims to pursue this goal in dialogue with other planned conference activities such as a small exhibition at the venue and guided visits to two Viennese museums hosting special exhibitions on this topic during the week of the conference.
References
References
[1] M. Alebri, E. Costanza, G. Panagiotidou, D. P. Brumby, F. Althani, R. Bovo. Visualisations with semantic icons. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 191(C), Nov. 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103343
[2] M. A. Borkin, Z. Bylinskii, N. W. Kim, C. M. Bainbridge, C. S. Yeh, D. Borkin, H. Pfister, and A. Oliva. Beyond Memorability: Visualization Recognition and Recall. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 22(1):519–528, Jan. 2016. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2015.2467732
[3] M. A. Borkin, A. A. Vo, Z. Bylinskii, P. Isola, S. Sunkavalli, A. Oliva, and H. Pfister. What Makes a Visualization Memorable? IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12):2306–2315, Dec. 2013. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2013.234
[4] A. Burns, C. Xiong, S. Franconeri, A. Cairo, and N. Mahyar. Designing with pictographs: Envision topics without sacrificing understanding. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 28(12):4515–4530, 2021.
[5] T. Deutinger. Joy and Fear: An Illustrated Report on Modernity. Lars Müller Publishers, 2023.
[6] T. Deutinger and B. McGetrick. Handbook of Tyranny (Expanded Edition). Lars Müller Publishers, 2023.
[7] S. Drucker, S. Huron, R. Kosara, J. Schwabish, and N. Diakopoulos. Communicating data to an audience. In Data-driven storytelling, pp. 211–231. AK Peters/CRC Press, 2018.
[8] S. Haroz, R. Kosara, and S. L. Franconeri. Isotype visualization: Working memory, performance, and engagement with pictographs. In Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems, pp. 1191–1200, 2015.
[9] F. Hartmann. Visualizing social facts: Otto neurath’s isotype project. In European modernism and the information society, pp. 279–293. Routledge, 2017.
[10] W. Jansen. Neurath, Arntz and Isotype: The legacy in art, design and statistics. Journal of Design History, 22(3):227–242, 2009. 1
[11] L. Morais, Y. Jansen, N. Andrade, and P. Dragicevic. Showing data about people: A design space of anthropographics. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 28(3):1661–1679, Mar. 2022. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.3023013
[12] E. Nemeth. Visualizing relations in society and economics: Otto neurath’s isotype-method against the background of his economic thought. Neurath reconsidered: New sources and perspectives, pp. 117–140, 2019.
[13] E. Nemeth and F. Stadler. Encyclopedia and utopia: the life and work of Otto Neurath (1882-1945), vol. 4. Springer Science & Business Media, 1996.
[14] M. Neurath. Isotype. Instructional science, pp. 127–150, 1974.
[15] O. Neurath. Modern man in the making. Philosophy of Science, 7(1), 1940.
[16] O. Neurath. From Hieroglyphics to Isotype: A Visual Autobiography. Hyphen Press, London, 2010.
[17] R. Nino Zambrano and Y. Engelhardt. Diagrams for the masses: Raising public awareness–from neurath to gapminder and google earth. In International conference on Theory and application of diagrams, pp. 282–292. Springer, 2008.
[18] D. Park, S. M. Drucker, R. Fernandez, and N. Elmqvist. Atom: A Grammar for Unit Visualizations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 24(12):3032–3043, Dec. 2018. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2017.2785807
[19] P. Pedersen. Behind isotype charts: The design of number-fact pictures. Visible Language, 51(1), 2017.
[20] G. Schreder, N. Hynek, F. Windhager, and E. Mayr. Rediscovering isotype from a cognitive perspective. In International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams, pp. 458–469. Springer, 2018.
[21] V. Setlur and J. D. Mackinlay. Automatic generation of semantic icon encodings for visualizations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI ’14, pp. 541–550. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Apr. 2014. doi: 10.1145/2556288.2557408
[22] G. Waldner. Ein Museum wechselt die Form. Zur Offenheit der Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik [A museum changes form. On the openness of the Viennese method of pictorial statistics]. In Kleinformate im Umbruch: Mobile Medien für Widerstand und Kooperation (1918–1933), pp. 205–223. De Gruyter, 2023.
[23] K. Wu, E. Petersen, T. Ahmad, D. Burlinson, S. Tanis, and D. A. Szafir. Understanding data accessibility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–16, 2021.
The Organizers
The Organizers
University of Applied Sciences,
St. Pölten
University for Continuing Education, Krems
University of Vienna
University of Vienna
University for Continuing Education, Krems
The Venue
The Venue
This panel discussion takes place within the IEEE VIS 2025 conference on Thursday, November 6, 2025, 2:00pm - 3:15pm (CET). Room details will be shared as soon as fixed.
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