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Isotype in Africa: Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Western Region of Nigeria, 1952–8

This book chapter reviews projects carried out by the Isotype Institute in British colonial West Africa in the 1950s. The research draws extensively on primary documents held in the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, including preparatory and finished design work, production documents, and correspondence. From these, the nature, conduct, outcome, and eventual cessation of projects in West Africa are explained in detail, with particular emphasis placed on design process, the logistics of working on-site, and interactions between the Isotype Institute, West African politicans and officials, and the British Colonial Office.The chapter illustrates an early instance of Western communication design expertise deployed in a developing, non-Western context, and the working relationship forged between the Isotype Institute and its West African partners. It documents how Isotype method’s of visual education were applied to non-Western communication needs, and the extent to which Isotype was shaped by and to these ‘encounters’, while still adhering to its underlying principles. The difficulties experienced by the Isotype Institute are identified, and observations offered about the effectiveness and sustainability of the projects that were completed.This work was an outcome of research conducted as part of the AHRC-funded ‘Isotype revisited’ project. It was published in preliminary form as ‘Isotype beyond the West’ in the second volume of the Proceedings of the 33rd International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium (Ontos Verlag, 2011), before its full treatment as the chapter described here. The book in which it is included is the first comprehensive treatment of Isotype work.