The Exiles and other stories, by Richard Harding Davis - 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
Two figures at opposite corners and wildly different scales create depth without perspective drawing - the near figure is large and cropped, the far figure small on a cliff, and the empty paper sea between them does all the spatial work. The one saturated orange shape, the headwrap, sits at the optical centre and becomes the fixation point, with the striped wrap beside it acting as a pattern trap that holds the eye. The title lettering is ragged and irregular so it reads as a hand-made mark against the tidy engraved credits, the same two-register trick Penfield used on his magazine sheets. Setting the publisher's name in reserved white on the dark cliff mass means the imprint is legible without any extra ink.
Steal this when
A short story collection, anthology or compilation where there is no single plot to sell. Pick one image that embodies the collection's theme, stage it with a near and a far figure, and let the author's name carry the credibility.