Lilith a romance by George MacDonald - 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 sheet contains two black shapes on flat yellow and nothing else, so the man and the bird are forced into a relationship - the reader supplies the story the poster refuses to tell. The cream cloud is not decoration but a legibility device: it lifts the author's name off the yellow at the exact spot where the eye lands after the title. Title, author and publisher run top, middle and foot in three distinct letter sizes, which turns the whole poster into a title page blown up to display scale, an efficient way to advertise a book when you cannot summarise it.
Steal this when
Use this when the thing you are selling is genuinely hard to describe and the author, artist or maker is the strongest asset you have. Two silhouettes on one flat colour, with the name given the best position on the sheet, beats any attempt at a plot summary.