May Belfort (Petit Casino) - 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
The palette is deliberately starved: one red, one green, black, and the paper. With that few values, the red mass becomes an identifier you can recognise at fifty metres and from a moving tram, which is what a poster on a hoarding needs. The cat is doing brand work rather than decoration - it is a small irregular black shape that punctures the largest flat area, so the eye is pulled to the chest, then up to the face. Name set in the artist's own lettering and in the background colour, not black, keeps the type inside the picture rather than stuck on top of it.
Steal this when
You are marketing a person whose recognisability is the asset - a performer, a speaker, a founder - and you want one silhouette plus one repeatable colour to become the shorthand. Use the starved palette when the piece will be seen at distance, in motion, or scaled down to a thumbnail.