Trade card of John Meader, cabinets and joyners work
The pattern
This still is filed under Keepable trade card.
Define
A small card people keep (pretty, useful, or collectible) that carries the brand after the encounter.
Mechanism
Retention object. The gift is the media. Recall is paid for by usefulness or delight, not by repetition.
Verdict
We can put a physical or digital keepable in someone's pocket and they will not throw it away.
Why it works
The woodcut is navigation, not decoration. Before street numbering the sign was the address, so the lion takes the top half at the largest size the sheet allows and everything else is subordinate to it. Italic is used as a highlighting system rather than for emphasis: the sign, the parish and the exotic product word are the only things a hurried reader has to catch, and they are the only words leaning. The stock runs as one unbroken sentence, which reads as abundance instead of as a catalogue, and the close is the only claim on the card, a price posture with no number attached to argue with.
Steal this when
When the buyer's first problem is finding you, give the locating device the top half of the layout and compress everything else into one block. The unpriced reasonable rates close still works in trades where naming a number starts the wrong conversation.