die neue linie, June 1930 - cover
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 raised hand is the hinge of the montage: it gives the picture a direction of sight, so the reader accepts a mountain range and a head at incompatible scales as one scene rather than two cuttings. The scale reversal ranks the figure above the place, which is the trade a lifestyle magazine is actually making, selling the reader a version of herself rather than a destination. Setting the date in the landscape green instead of the masthead white makes it belong to the picture and stops it competing with the title. Holding the palette to grey, green and white with one red accent on the hood pulls the eye straight to the face, since it is the only warm area on the page.
Steal this when
Use when you need a scene and a person in one frame without the person becoming a model shot. Give the figure a gesture that establishes a line of sight into the scene, and reserve the only saturated colour for the point you want looked at first.