I don't know if you've seen the books Standards Manual put out (https://standardsmanual.com/ https://standardsmanual.com/) but I am starting to wonder, having r

I don't know if you've seen the books Standards Manual put out (https://standardsmanual.com/ https://standardsmanual.com/) but I am starting to wonder, having recently seen them (graphic standards documents from the 70s and 80s) displayed very near the entrance to Foyles in London, whether there's some emotional/psychological need emerging, in these times of decadence, for rules, systems which embody firm judgements of value. The fact that these systems are underpinned by a rational grid system, that they are "programmes" in the designer Karl Gerstner's terms, doesn't mean that they aren't absolutely loaded with normative principles. Modernism was always like this, I guess—a scientific costume, announcing classical values.