Some people see letters. Others see words. But a rare few fall headfirst into the history of the period. 🧵 1/

One for the collection. Thank you and happy holidays @espiekermann and @galeriep98a!

13/13 // A little of what’s coming to Daily Quadrat in 2026. One curiosity a day. For the typographically obsessed. Subscribe here →

The collection preserves not just the artifacts, but the idea that information does indeed belong to everyone—an idea that, despite exile and suppression, found its way regardless. 12/

The work is preserved today at the University of Reading. In 1971, the Isotype Institute gave its working materials to the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, where they now form the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection. 11/

This might be overstating things, but had that small team not fled Vienna, then The Hague, their visual method might have been lost—suppressed, along with the democratic institutions that supported freedom of information. 10/

It is sobering to consider what infographics might look like today had Isotype not escaped fascism. 9/

Isotype even survived forced exile, twice—first from fascist suppression, then Nazi occupation. 8/

Today, its influence is everywhere. Wayfinding and infographics draw from Isotype principles. When we see meaning condensed to pictograms, we are experiencing the legacy of that Vienna studio. 7/

Marie Neurath worked as the “transformer,” a kind of intermediary between specialists and the public. Otto and Marie never used the term “designer,” viewing it as influenced by fashion. Isotype was standards-minded: once a symbol worked, there was no reason to change it. 6/

Between 1925 and 1934, Vienna was implementing big social democratic reforms. The city funded a museum designed to represent social facts through graphics. The team built an interdisciplinary graphic design agency—a prototype that would influence visual communication today. 5/

Isotype worked on a set of principles that shaped the infographics of today. Such as, greater quantities are not represented by enlarging a pictogram, but by repeating the same sized symbol. The repetition allows accurate counting and immediate comprehension. 4/

They created standardized symbols for social, technological, and economic data. The museum’s motto: “To remember simplified pictures is better than to forget accurate figures.” The method would later become Isotype, the International System of Typographic Picture Education. 3/

In a teaching museum in Red Vienna, a team led by Otto Neurath, Marie Reidemeister (later Marie Neurath), and artist Gerd Arntz created the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics to make information visually accessible. 2/

The graphics we see in airports and public spaces in a way owe their existence to an idea from 1920s Vienna: that information belongs to everyone, not just scholars. 1/

A speaker who yells might be more audible, but that doesn’t make them more understandable. 1/

I hold a sheet of handmade paper up to the light. Experts in the field of bibliography can read this paper like a map: fine horizontal lines running across the surface, thicker vertical lines, and a translucent design, often a crown, shield, or initials, pressed into the fiber. 1

“Typographical Wit” “Ho! Tommy,” bawls Type, to a brother in trade, “The ministry are to be *chang’d* it is said.” “That’s good,” replied Tom; “but it better would be with a trifling erratum.” “What?” “Dele the c.” — Anonymous, ~1833

They’re everywhere. On the train. In the airport. On restaurant menus. In your favorite writer’s best posts. In that logo of the latest rebrand we all love to hate. 1/

Anyone have recommendations for podcast apps that don't sell you out to data brokers?

Designing for email, you have to go super old school. Like 1996 style html. Web safe fonts. Georgia, Verdana, Courier. It’s best to design for places like Gmail and improve from there — or not! We’re doing these want-ad style sponsor ads. Courier props these up nicely.