The Measure of Man—a guide for industrial designers, complete with scores of anthropometric data points—features hundreds, if not thousands, of meticulously calculated measurements of various human bodies. To the industrial designer, engineer, fabricator, CAD operator,
drafter, or architect the aesthetic elements of Measure of Man and its descendents should seem familiar, as they use the same visual language as the engineering drawing or architectural blueprint. After reviewing the projects themselves, the standards which their aesthetic stylings
mirror, and a number of historical antecedents, I will enact a Foucauldian discourse analysis, eventually arguing that projects such as the Human Design Manual implicate the normalized and classified human body in the construction of our built world, but they also reify the power held by those
with the expertise in the standardized visual language of drafting and engineering.