But the point of this entry isn't to poke at web designers for restyling traditional notions of design, in fact it's the opposite. As an educator, if I were teaching a class on book design and wanted to explain the 'Van de Graaf canon' of grid construction, I would be at a loss for a competent text on the subject printed after 1950. To teach a similar approach in web design would require little more than a search on Medium.
That's the interesting thing about web design; it's never really learned to stop reteaching itself the traditions of design. While there were certainly dark times for web typography and layout, that veil has quietly lifted to reveal an era of baseline grids, whitespace, and even innovation. Meanwhile, print design seems to have resigned itself to a long span of contemplative deconstruction.