La Revue Blanche - 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
One figure, three flat shapes, one focal point. Lautrec throws away modelling everywhere except the face, so at posting distance the sheet reads as a black wedge and a pale cloud before you are close enough to read anything. The lettering is not laid over the image, it occupies the negative space the figure leaves, which is why the commercial terms can be set small and still be found. Personification does the selling: the product is an abstraction, so the poster shows the kind of person who reads it instead.
Steal this when
You are selling something with no visible product - a publication, a membership, a service - and the honest move is to show the buyer they want to become rather than the thing itself. Also use the layout when your price and terms are long and dull: park them in the space the illustration leaves, small, in a descending stack.