Roger Cook and Don Shanosky's Symbol Signs

In the early 1970s the Department of Transportation assembles a committee to to make recommendations for a public signage system. Above the result. The idea is to make environments less threatening and more unified. See hoe the skirt at the knees of the woman already speaks of the sensibility after the sex revolution of the 1960s.

what do we get here?

1- the familiar is abstracted and simplified inside a white box,
2- the symbol now substitutes the thing,
3- modernization,
4- standardization,