The stories that archives tell: the quest to produce a symbol dictionary
Perks, Sue (2018) The stories that archives tell: the quest to produce a symbol dictionary. In: INSIGHT2018. University of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. (Submitted)
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Archives reveal unexpected truths. This paper describes a journey beginning in the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection at University of Reading and concluding in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. The Isotype Collection contains correspondence relating to a proposed symbol dictionary project involving Marie Neurath, Rudolf Modley and American industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. It was known as the “Preparatory Survey on Communication
through Graphic Symbols”, a project that formed one of the several failed attempts to produce a symbol dictionary going back as far as 1940. Transatlantic correspondence between M. Neurath in the UK and Modley in America commenced in 1958 and ceased in 1960 after funding beyond a pilot study was not forthcoming. Other symbol dictionary-related project proposals followed in America during the 1960s, involving Dreyfuss, Modley and the anthropologist Margaret Mead. Finally, in
1970, Dreyfuss secured US funding for the Henry Dreyfuss Symbol Sourcebook (first published January 1972). In 2015, correspondence from 1969 came to light in the Symbol Sourcebook Archive at the Cooper Hewitt, between Paul Clifton (Symbol Sourcebook design manager) and M. Neurath, relating back to the “Preparatory Survey”, asking for advice on the classification systems that she and Modley had developed in relation to the Symbol Sourcebook. This evidence prompted my visit
to the Symbol Sourcebook Archive. Seen in its entirety, this archive contains a vivid account of the maturing of graphic design from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. As a researcher interested in Isotype, it also provides a glimpse of how Isotype was regarded in America at a time when internationalism was taking hold and symbol-related matters were burgeoning, nearly fifty years since Isotype was conceived in the mid 1920s. This paper will describe why and how the Symbol Sourcebook evolved and reveal Isotype-related observations discovered in the archive.
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