The chap-book (1894) [A woman surrounded by trees] - 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 single white horizontal band sits exactly at head height, so in a field of dark blue the eye is thrown at the face before anything else is processed. Everything is flat colour with contour outline and no modelling, taken from Japanese woodblock and from Beardsley, which is why it holds together as one poster shape rather than as a picture with type dropped on it. The title is set over the figure and over the trees rather than in its own clear zone, which makes the words read as part of the image and gives the magazine a look instead of an announcement. There is no issue, no date and no price anywhere on the sheet, and that omission is the decision that turns an advertisement into an identity.
Steal this when
Steal this when the thing you are selling is taste and the buyer is buying association rather than information. Strip out every transactional detail, lock the palette to three inks, and let a single band of light decide where the eye lands.