Eye Magazine

Split into thirteen chapters covering topics on the Nuclear era, Population, Agriculture, Raw Materials, Fossil Fuels, Trade, War, Politics, Consumerism, Lifestyle, Family, Leisure and Digital Times, Joy and Fear offers a snapshot of modernity. The chapters often cross-reference and call back to each other, providing pieces to the whole picture of how the world works today. Some subjects are extensions of topics introduced by Neurath, while a large proportion such as the rise of China and the internet are new.

Like Neurath, Deutinger takes an international viewpoint. He also seeks to be faithful to the original style of the pictograms. In Neurath’s work all humans are depicted as men, unless they are specifically representing a woman. Deutinger quite sensibly updates this to a more androgynous form, while also attempting to remove sexist, racist and other exclusionary biases from other illustrations, but concedes ‘we cannot pretend to have done so perfectly, as the Isotype is by nature a generalising form of representation’. It would have been helpful if Deutinger had made a further concession and included pictograms in the key / legend to more of the charts. He does this for just one chart and for the rest provides descriptions such as blue filled, blue outlined, red filled, etc. which are not as easily understood.

There is far more fear than joy in Joy and Fear. The fear starts with the first chapter that covers the Nuclear Era, under the title ‘Modernity Kills’. Charts show the power of nuclear weapons, where nuclear waste is dumped in the oceans, and measured by the Doomsday Clock, how close humanity is to a man-made catastrophe. (Since publication, the clock has got even closer to midnight.) The joy of progress such as the standardisation of the shipping container, which revolutionised world trade, is tempered by the fear of redundancies in previously busy docks, and the exploitation of low-paid workers on the other side of the world. Any pure joy can be found in the evidence that the welfare state leads to a more equitable society, and that child mortality has dropped in most parts of the world.

Deutinger is a safe pair of hands as he conscientiously leads us through each chapter. He is critical of the West and how its innovations lead to a demand for resources at the expense of the Global South, stating: ‘the West schedules resources it does not own and has no right to use … land, people and cultures are included in an equation they are not aware of until investors show up.’ He further highlights this inequality in the chapter on ‘War’: ‘the West imports cheap plastic clothes, rare earths for mobile phones and soybeans for the vegan diet, and in return gives weapons of mass destruction.’

Joy and Fear functions as a manual and audit on how the world works now. It shows the fast switch to a digital world, the rise and power of China and hints at the future rise of India. It clearly explains the inequality, injustices and many ways the world suffers from man-made activity in the pursuit of modernisation. It is an important document and proof that we know what we are doing to the world and each other – but do it anyway. Unless there is a fundamental social change the future version of this project in 80 years’ time will likely have even less joy than this one.

Chris Brawn, designer, London

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.