Folly or saintliness (1895) - poster
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
The title is an either/or with no resolution offered, and the drawing refuses to settle it: the expression can be read as sly or as serene depending on how long you look. That unresolved gap is the hook, and it is built into the words rather than added by a line of copy. Technically the poster runs the whole image as orange line on black, which means the eye reads it as a drawing rather than a picture and moves quickly to the solid orange type block below, where the only fully saturated shapes live. The corner poppies repeat the flower from the woman's hand, closing the composition without another illustration.
Steal this when
Use when the proposition itself contains a genuine tension or a two-sided question, and the strongest thing you can do is refuse to resolve it. Also steal the line-on-dark technique when you have two inks and want an image to sit quietly behind a type block.