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Marie Neurath was a pioneer in information design who co-developed the graphic approach Isotype and co-founded the Isotype Institute. This article elaborates on Marie’s creation of an educational exhibition in 1946 in Bilston, UK, advocating for a slum clearance project in a working-class neighborhood of Bilston. For over ten months, Marie carefully designed twelve charts that would help viewers understand the importance of the project for health and happiness. Despite being one of Isotype’s most visionary schemes for public education, Marie’s original contribution is unclear, in part because a new town clerk changed the housing exhibition at the last minute, bringing in “attractions” such as an ant farm and related cartoons. This article draws on correspondence, sketches, and notes from The Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection at the University of Reading to show that Marie’s work should be recognized as a central contribution in the Bilston work.

The purpose of pharmaceutical pictograms is to help patients manage their medicinal treatment. However, the pictograms often lack perceptual clarity. While they are frequently tested for aspects such as comprehension, little attention has been paid to their legibility. This paper presents the conception and results of an experiment adapted from the ISO ‘Method for testing perceptual quality’ (ISO 9186-2:2008) to measure the visibility of pictogram elements in two sets: 15 American USP pictograms and 15 redesigned versions reduced in complexity. The statistical analysis did not show reliable significant differences, which indicates that there are more factors at stake.

The design of medicinal information in leaflets and labels is often criticized for not meeting patients' needs. For that reason, there is an increasing focus on how the use of pictures, such as pictograms, may benefit patients on their medical journey. However, before a pictogram can be comprehended it must be legible, which may be a challenge when pharmaceutical information has to be conveyed. Within a limited space many visual details need to be included in order to clarify the intended meaning. While we have abundant information about the comprehension of pictograms, we know very little about the legibility - the ability to visually identify objects - of pictograms. By looking at legibility research into pharmaceutical pictograms from a design perspective, this paper demonstrates that legibility is not prioritized either in theory or in practice. In order to proceed with the use and implementation of pictograms in, for example, patient information leaflets and labels, we need to know more about the features that constitute legibility. To create a research foundation, this paper draws on knowledge of visibility and legibility from related domains. This forms the basis of a discussion of the need for future research to focus on legibility issues, amongst others by incorporating design knowledge into experiments.

The core concept of this visual experiment is “transformation,” an approach to the visualisation of information, which was developed in the 1920s based on ISOTYPE (an acronym for I nternational S ystem O f TY pographic P icture E ducation). In the present on-going PhD-project—where research through design and design history are intertwined—visual experimentation is central for understanding what rests within original Isotype material. Two visual experiments have already been conducted each of them presenting a different angle towards widening the theory on transformation. This paper presents the third experiment that accumulates and extends the previous two experiments by reusing and revising both their visual methodologies and gained knowledge. The purpose is to go one step deeper into the material in order to understand how it is possible to work with transformation in design. With a critical look at the earlier experiments, the notion of transformation is now presented again through a series of visualisations. As a consequence the paper offers two angles towards information design, first how information design methods can be employed as a toll for research, second how the research reveals new details and principles in the process of transformation and adds to the field of information design.