Frames

Something that I have always taken for granted in design was framing. As the textbook states, framing is very ubiquitous. As Lupton and Phillips state on page 101:

"Frames are everywhere. A picture frame sets off a work of art from its surroundings, bringing attention to the work and lifting it apart from its setting. Shelves, pedestals, and vitrines provide stages for displaying objects. A saucer frames a tea cup, and a place mat outlines the pieces of a table setting."

These are such commonplace objects that I never even considered them to be frames. Something that we discussed in class that I found interesting was the expense of framing a painting or photograph. As we discussed in class, the intricacy and expense of a frame can speak volumes about what is being framed--it can even change the amount the framed material is worth. We discussed invaluable prints being professionally framed with hundred (even thousand) dollar frames, as well as original, expensive pieces of work being framed with cheap frames from the store. The way something is framed can change the way it is decoded entirely.

The chapter discusses interfaces as a kind of frame--buttons on a TV, toolbars on a software program, etc. The authors write on page 101:

"The buttons on a television set, the index of a book, or the toolbars of a software application exist outside the central purpose of the product, yet they are essential to our understanding of it. A hammer with no handle or a cell phone with no controls is useless."

I found this passage fascinating because I never would have considered an interface (like a hammer's handle) to be a type of frame--but now that it is brought to my attention, it makes sense completely. Even the ways an image is cropped can be considered a frame, even though there is an absence of traditional frame or border that acts as a frame, meaning that even the lack of a frame can be a frame.

Framing, in the traditional sense, not only ascribes importance to the material being framed, but it even denotes to others what that material is worth to the person that has (or does not have) the material framed. If you were a visitor in somebody's home who had several unframed paintings propped against the wall, you would either think they haven't had a chance to frame them yet, or that the paintings simply held no value to the person you were visiting. Framing denotes importance in many ways.