Lettered cover hook

The pattern

This still is filed under Lettered cover hook.

Define

The cover is the hook, and the hook is lettering: a title treated as an image.

Mechanism

Type as bait. The words are drawn so they stop the hand before the contents are known.

Verdict

A journal, book, or issue must sell itself on a rack or a feed

Why it works

Reed collapses the whole book into one character and lets the character make eye contact, which converts a browsing glance into a held look. The brushwork is deliberately unfinished everywhere except the face, so the eye has exactly one place to resolve detail and the huge black masses stay as shape rather than as drawing. A single flat exotic ground colour, salmon on a street of white bills, is the attention device before any of the drawing is read. Price is set at display size on the same line weight as the imprint, so the poster answers what, who and how much in three stops without a sentence of body copy.

The big idea

Sell the book through its heroine: a society woman in a huge plumed hat and wide collar who looks the passer-by in the eye.

The offer

A Virginia Cousin & Bar Harbor Tales by Mrs. Burton Harrison, from Lamson Wolffe & Co., Boston & New York, price $1.25.

Lines from the ad

A VIRGINIA COUSIN & BAR HARBOR TALES

BY MRS. BURTON HARRISON.

PRICE $1.25

Steal this when

You are selling fiction, a personality-led product or anything where the protagonist is the appeal, and a single confronting portrait will do more than a plot summary. Also when you need a poster to win a crowded wall on ground colour alone.