Kaffee Hag - poster
The pattern
This still is filed under Iconic figure claim.
Define
A single figure, drawn, silhouetted, or posed, is the whole claim. You can read it across a street.
Mechanism
Compression into a body. The figure is not decoration. It is the sentence. Distance-legibility is the test.
Verdict
Poster scale, outdoor, packaging at a glance
Why it works
Flattening the figure to two colour areas and printing the skin an impossible red stops the image reading as illustration and makes it read as a sign, which is what survives at poster distance. Two thirds of the sheet is left empty so there is nothing to look at except the cup at the man's mouth. Splitting the two-word brand name either side of the head fuses the name with the gesture of drinking, and the mug carries the only detail on the whole sheet, so the package is what the eye rests on.
Steal this when
Use when the brand name is short and the product is consumed in one recognisable gesture: split the name either side of the person performing it, keep the body a single flat plane, and let the package hold the only pattern or detail in the frame.