Much like Michael Freeman talks about a discrete number of compositional archetypes in photography, Simon Esterson once joked to me that “there are really only a dozen ways to lay out out a magazine page; probably fewer than seven for newspapers”. Simon was probably just trying to reassure me about my undeniable lack of imagination when it comes to news design. But I took the idea to heart.

I suspect that there are some underlying tenets about alignment, proportion and tone that are more science than art. If that’s true, you could in theory have a machine identify which of those “dozen” platonic forms lies behind a particular layout, then apply an interpretation of that form appropriate to target devices, flavoured of course with the publisher’s house style for typography, colour palettes, etc.

Obviously we’re not talking about content-led design – but maybe a certain flexibility based on some smart paradigms is a step up from a entirely content-agnostic template.