Until the 1950s, atlases consisted mainly of maps that simply showed space and place. However, in 1953, the World Geographic Atlas, published by Walter Paepcke's Container Corporation of America (CCA) with Herbert Bayer, changed people's notion of what maps look like and what information they contain. Bayer believed that the maps were “a record of time and perhaps even a forecasting tool.” Using Isotypes (International System of Typographic Image Education), Bayer created a universal atlas, which therefore allowed viewers to understand complex data more clearly and easily. Born in Haag, Austria, in 1900, Herbert Bayer grew up in the time of the rapidly changing environment and technologically revolutionary years. After serving in the Austrian army, he began studying architecture with Professor Schmidthammer in Linz, but in 1921 he enrolled as a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he studied mural painting with Wassily Kandinsky. Bayer was subsequently appointed by Walter Gropius to head the first printing and advertising laboratory in Dessau. “Under Bayer's direction, the newly installed laboratory has transformed into a professional studio for graphic design and commercial art. The study of the communicative potential of letterforms and typographical layout was part of a core curriculum in the mechanics of visual education. Innovations such as the elimination of capital letters, the replacement of the archaic Gothic alphabet used in German printing with a modern “cosmopolitan” font, and the concept of composition based on strong geometric elements and expressive color values, demonstrate a move away from products made in hand individually and traditionally shaped towards objects that meet the suitable functional requirements... middle of paper ......dynamic design by Moholy-Nagy. Color keys include green for agriculture, blue for mining, red for manufacturing, and brown for exports and imports. Mineral symbols were based on chemical elements. Inspired by Bauhaus methods, Bayer advocated the concept of the total work of art and unity: painting, typography and information design were all connected to each other. Furthermore, every element of the design was there for a purpose: to inspire, inform, or both. The atlas was “an example of how Americans had adapted Bauhaus design principles to communicate simply, directly, and with possible force. World resource atlases produced before Bayer's publication hardly used modernist graphic language. This would change with the environmental atlases of the 1970s which borrowed heavily from Bayer in their integration of colours, graphics and symbols..”