In Michael Rock's Fuck Content essay, he examines the roles of design and the designer, and justifies design as a content just as substantial and influential as other kinds of content, like writing and art. I wanted to create a book form that would highlight design itself as the designer's content, and landed upon the idea of frames.
A symbol of design, frames alter the perception of its content. As frames can obscure or clarify or comment upon the content they hold, and exist in places where we may be entirely unaware of them, they are immensely powerful. Rock's essay, too, is a frame through which people might view design or have their views altered. Pulling from this idea, I designed a book with layered text frames on translucent paper to merge Rock's original and revised essay. The frames increase in size as you move throughout the book, and the openings in the center allow you to see the essays behind each page, so that every essay is literally framing the framing of itself—the design. The book intentionally echoes the justified page format of illuminated manuscripts, and is itself illuminated by 21st century ornamentation (icons) that separates the paragraphs in Rock's essay, with each icon referencing the sentence that follows it.
