Image Treatment intermediate cleardemocraticsystematic

Isotype Pictogram

Isotype Pictogram example frame

Repeated identical symbols to show quantity, never one symbol scaled up.

What it does

Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz built the International System of Typographic Picture Education in 1920s Vienna to make statistics readable without literacy. The governing rule is that a greater quantity is shown by more symbols, never by a bigger symbol, because area is misread while count is not. Arntz cut the symbols as linocuts: flat, frontal, no perspective, no detail beyond what identifies the thing. Every modern airport pictogram descends from this.

The prompt

An Isotype statistical chart about [Subject]. Quantity shown by repeating identical flat pictograms in a row, never by scaling one symbol larger. Symbols frontal and silhouetted with no perspective, no outline and no interior detail beyond what identifies them. Three flat colours plus black on cream. Ranged-left labels in a plain grotesque beneath each row.

Replace [Subject] with what you are shooting. Everything else is deliberate: the gear, stock and lighting are what push a generator towards this look.

Works well in

Ideogram, Midjourney, FLUX

Pairs with

Technical DrawingSwiss International Style

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