Frances to William and others... His book "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst published by Hartley and Marks of Vancouver in 1992 seems to deal with many of the issues raised here. There is also a strong underlying sense of sign theory implied in his thesis. He holds that the "grid" layout within the marginal frame of the printed page is a systemic program that can nonetheless vary from say asymmetrical to symmetrical, but can then be an added signifier of further objects and contents in its own right. This is consistent with a semiotic approach to the matter.
On the "frame" or "boarder" of a picture as a sign in its own right, for semioticians it is posited at least as an indexical indicator of grounds with limits. As a further aspect of cognition, the signing "frame" is deemed a pragmatic work of thought. It is further held in pragmatist semiotics that indicators are mainly vectors, which includes frames and boarders as well as pointers and arrows and lines and leaders and braces and brackets and quotes and so on. It seems that vectors are divisive containers that can have their place in objects like graphics and poetics, but that eventually come to rest in the objects of logics and mathematics, which after all is the stated end goal of semiotics. The works of "concrete poetry" for example as a footnote here would perhaps depend on typographic form more than other literary works might. It is accepted that typographic form likely includes the syntactic elements of colors and textures and shapes, along with material and technical concerns, as well as frames and grounds and layouts and depths. The key issue however seems to be whether such form can evoke emotional responses of considerable intensity, and furthermore whether it can affect the reader of its text to the extent that the effect is noteworthy in say fiction or nonfiction and in say art or science.
