Otto Neurath Presents his Style of Graphic Visualizations of Statistics in "Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft"

In his book, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft: Bildstatistische Elementarwerk; des Gesellschafts-und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (1930) Austrian sociologist and political enonomist Otto Neurath presented the style of graphic visualization of statistics that was first known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics (Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik) because it was developed at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (Social and Economic Museum of Vienna) that Neurath directed, between 1925 and 1934. Neurath's work was presente din the form of a portfolio of 100 color printed plates and published in Leizpig by the Bibliographisches Institut.

The technique that Neurath developed later became known as ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education). ISOTYPE consists of a set of standardized and abstracted pictorial symbols designed to represent social-scientific data, with specific guidelines on how to combine identical figures using serial repetition. In that respect is a kind of visual language.

Like Paul Otlet, Otto Neurath believed that information presented visually could be applied in a general and international way, and had the potential to have an immediate impact on political and social issues.