I didn't know those picture-symbols we take for granted -- the ones at airports and other large public places showing us where the restrooms or exits are located and other such important information, originated with the International System of Typographic Picture Education. The ISOTYPE story is fascinating and starts with a Vienna museum director, Otto Neurath, who in 1926 hired a young graphic artist Gerd Arntz, to work on a public education project Neurath got involved with after a study tour of poor rural regions of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Neurath's objective was to educate people who could not read or write on important social, economic, political and scientific issues by creating a pictorial system of symbols designed by Arntz. These symbols went on to become one of the 20th century's most successful information design projects and the basis of those picture-symbols we follow so automatically these days.
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