Posada 13238u
The pattern
This still is filed under Exhibit in the column.
Define
An image is dropped into the column of type so the reader meets picture and argument in one scan.
Mechanism
In-flow exhibit. The figure is not a separate see fig. 2. It starts the paragraph. Eye and mind start together.
Verdict
Long copy must show as well as tell: a product cutaway, a before/after, a map in the story.
Why it works
The picture does the selling and the type does the delivery: at arm's length in a street the buyer reads only the black banner and the crowd of skulls, which is the entire pitch. The large italic couplet is a pull quote - the loudest two lines lifted out of the verse and set four times the size of the body so a hawker can shout them and a semi-literate buyer gets the joke without finishing the sheet. First-person boasting carries the whole copy, so the reader is being addressed by the character rather than told about him, and the pile of skulls under the boaster supplies the irony the words never state. The small vignettes scattered through the columns break an intimidating grey block into pictures, keeping a low-literacy reader moving down the page.
Steal this when
Steal this when a piece has to work at two distances and two reading levels at once - a poster, a feed post, a flyer - by letting one image plus one oversized pulled line carry the whole idea, with the argument available underneath for whoever stays. Also steal the device of letting a character brag in first person while the art quietly contradicts him.