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Sue Walker

Let’s see inside: the Isotype Institute’s approach
to child-centred book design

Graphic explanation for children is one way to describe the children's books that were designed by the Isotype Institute from the 1940s to the late 1960s and which included series such as the Visual History of Mankind, Wonders of the Modern World, Visual Science, The Wonder World of Nature, They Lived Like This. Many were translated into languages other than English, including German, Japanese, French, Danish, and Italian.

This talk is an account of the approach taken in the making of these books which shows how Isotype principles are used to enhance accessibility, and how Otto and Marie Neurath understood the importance of finding ways to encourage younger readers to engage with non-fiction texts. They brought a child-centred approach to book design; the concept of the ‘magic knife’ used first in If you could see inside was one such example.

This phrase was used in the text to link with the cross section diagrams that was a characteristic feature of Marie Neurath’s way of explaining complexity to children. Further, the schoolbooks show how her role as transformer underpinned an approach to integrated book design in which editors and designers worked as teams making books in which text and pictures were considered alongside each other.

The talk is illustrated with examples of Otto and Marie Neurath’s sketches, and discusses in detail some of the graphic explanations and the rationale behind them from The visual history of mankind and other series.

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Sue Walker is Professor of Typography, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Reading. Her main research interests are in typographic design for children, and the interface between typography and language, in particular the relationship between prescription and practice in everyday documents. With Eric Kindel she is co-investigator on an Arts and Humanities Research Council project, Isotype Re-visited, looking in detail at the Neuraths’ work on designing for children. She previously practiced as an information designer as a partner in Text Matters, and continues to undertake research and consultancy in this area.

© Information Design Association 2009