Ontwerp voor een affiche (?) voor de Christelijke Jongemannenvereniging Excelsior
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
This is concrete lettering used as a mnemonic. Each phrase is deformed into the shape of the thing it names, so the reader does not have to hold a list of six abstractions in memory - the helmet, the shield, the sword, the shoes are all recognisable at a glance and the words are recovered from the picture. Working in a single ink on toned stock forces every distinction to be carried by weight, direction and counter-shape, which is exactly what makes the objects legible as silhouettes. The unlettered brown ground also means the design can be enlarged or reproduced by the cheapest possible method without losing anything.
Steal this when
Use this when a list of abstract values has to be memorised rather than merely read, and you have no budget for illustration. Setting each item's own words into the shape of a concrete object turns a list into a diagram people can recall.