Form vs. Function

From Mographwiki.net

The function of a piece of design lies in what content it intends to impart to a viewer (such as emotion, storyline, or other information) and how that communication is carried out. The content and the function are embodied by the form.

To your audience, the content of ANY piece is only accessible through the form that you've created. The form embodies and carries the content. It is, almost literally, the flesh n bone to the content's personage. If the flesh n bone weren't there, there really wouldn't be a person, and the same is true here. We can still talk about a theoretical person who doesn't actually have a physical form, but we're either talking about them in abstract terms (she's obnoxious), or in descriptive terms (her voice sounds like a smoker's, and she smells musty) in which case we're describing formal qualities.

There are a lot of arguments about the value of form vs. content, but in reality, although we can talk about what a piece is about AND what it looks like (and the relative merits of each), there's really no separating the form from the content. Any instance of form evokes something, even if it's just a shape or a line or a color and it evokes an idea like "uhh, it's a line" or "uhh, red... like blood... or soviet propoganda", so there's content as soon as a mark has been made. Inversely, without any form there's just invisible nothingness, so there is no content.