The captured cunarder by William H. Rideing (1896) - 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 image is built by subtraction. Bird throws away modelling, perspective detail and any human figure and keeps one enormous black shape, so the poster is legible from across a street where a detailed drawing would read as grey mush. The three spots of red act as a colour accent system: one warm note in a cold field forces the eye to travel funnel, hull, waterline, which is the same diagonal the bow already travels. Price is set inside the headline, not tucked at the foot, so the pedestrian gets title, author and cost in a single glance with no second fixation.
Steal this when
You are selling one thing with an inherently dramatic silhouette and want stopping power at distance rather than persuasion up close. Also when your budget or medium limits you to two or three inks and you need the constraint to look deliberate.