#standardization

Article in the January 15, 1940 LIFE about the WPA's efforts to standardize women's clothing sizing.

Like we HAD a universal, standardized plug that every automaker (except Tesla) was using. All cars were already being made with this plug, and all was great.

And then it wasn’t.

Because instead of Tesla (the one and ONLY company that didn’t use J1772 & CCS1) switching to the universal standard… literally every other automaker (and the countless EV models they produce) have decided to slowly, haphazardly, and somewhat prematurely, one-by-one switch their cars over to J3400 & NACS.

Now we’re in a messy situation where some cars have NACS, some don’t. Some are planned to have it, some have no word. Some automakers provide free adapters, some don’t. Oh… and there are like ZERO non-Tesla NACS stations compared to the number of CCS1 stations… so… not only are there growing pains out the gate… but they’re gonna stick around until the notoriously slow-to-upgrade charging networks of North America decide to start adding/replacing cables en masse.

And all this… when we could’ve just had Tesla switch to J1772 & CCS1. Only their four existing cars would’ve had to have come with it, and the charging network they have 100% control over could’ve switched just as fast.

One car brand.

Four models.

One charging network.

But no. We get the shit end of the stick because people won’t stop giving Elon Musk their money.

Well, the same costume design can be fit to different actors’ bodies without any design change. Actors’ natural hair will always have a lot more variance. The same hairstyles can’t be altered to different hair as easily, the hair colors that are flattering or look natural on one person won’t look the same way on another, etc etc. It just introduces far more questions about what should/shouldn’t be standardized than costumes do. And actors have broad diversity in hair color/texture/type, which stands to be erased by standardizing hairstyles/wig design in a way that body diversity can’t be erased by costumes.

Differences in costumes are also going to be more noticeable than differences in wigs/hair design, on average. Think about Laura Dawn Pyatt vs Ellie Jane Grant’s Boleyn costume - that difference is noticeable even to someone who has only ever seen marketing for the show. Meanwhile on Broadway Hailee Kaleem Wright and Kristina Leopold have very different wig designs for Aragon, but that’s not going to be noticeable to the average audience member (+ each design feels natural and flattering on them)

Ultimately it just comes to the core intent of that costume rule: not wanting understudies to be treated as “lesser than” any of the principals. Historically, shows haven't always treated their understudies equally, sometimes giving them noticeably significantly lower quality costumes or not even giving them costumes of their own (instead having them share with principals or other understudies). The whole intent of that rule is to require that shows can’t take those shortcuts and instead treat their understudies fairly. In Six’s alt costume system, the alts do get very cool costumes so fair treatment isn’t really the concern, but it’s still a general rule that has to be fairly applied equally across all Broadway shows.

But ultimately that concept of fair treatment doesn’t really apply to wig design. Historically (and even now) many shows have standardized wigs, in style/color/texture. But most of the time that intent hasn’t been about fairness; it’s been about making the differences in appearance between principal and understudy as subtle as possible so that the audience won’t realize an understudy is performing. As Broadway is learning to embrace both their understudies + more diversity in race/ethnicity/appearance more broadly, there’s less focus on making understudies conform to a standardized look (and wigs as a big part of this). Hamilton is really a gold standard example of this: they’ve embraced giving all their principals and understudies wigs that generally match their natural color/texture and even some individualized styles and design. North American Six is also slowly learning to do this, with the newer Cleves and Parr looks and Leandra Ellis-Gaston’s Boleyn braids. Ultimately most of these shows are still following some general guidelines on shape/style for different roles, but ultimately there’s still focus being put on giving each actor a wig that’s individually suited to them even within those guidelines.

Standardized education

Yes! Stemma QT boards work with the Arduino UNO R4! 🎉🔌🛠️📡💡🌐

Calling him the „pope“ of rationalization in architecture is no exaggeration: with his „Bauentwurfslehre/Architects’ Data“, commonly referred to as „The Neufert“, Ernst Neufert (1900-86) wrote the omnipresent reference book for the spatial requirements in building design and site planning. First published in 1936 it has up to now seen 42(!) editions and has been translated into 18 languages. But despite the manual’s global success its author has remained somewhat opaque, just like the context in which it first appeared: published during the Third Reich Neufert, formerly banned by the Nazis, with the unexpectedly bestselling book gained the attention of Albert Speer who consecutively commissioned Neufert to design standardized and rationalized dwellings. A critical evaluation and discussion of his career and architecture had been a long time in the coming after Werner Durth in the mid-1980s uncovered Neufert’s entanglement in the higher echelons of the Nazi regime, a major gap in large parts closed by the present anthology: „Ernst Neufert - Normierte Baukultur im 20. Jahrhundert“, edited by Walter Prigge and published in 1999 by Campus Verlag, that offers profound and multifocal perspectives on the architect’s built work, his biography and his theoretical considerations. It draws a line from his Bauhaus years and his employment in Walter Gropius’ office to the Third Reich and postwar Germany, a particularly successful part of his career during which he realized a number of large-scale industrial projects. In the latter projects Neufert was able to run through standardization and rationalization from A to Z. But for good reasons the contributing authors also don’t omit the valid criticism of Neufert laying the ground for monotonous prefab architecture that specifically characterized the housing construction in the former GDR and numerous low-cost housing projects in Germany.