One Product Floating, Forty Products Crammed Open a Tiffany & Co. Blue Book from any decade and the page arrives nearly empty: one ring, maybe two, set against a field of white so clean it reads as intention. Turn to the weekend newspaper insert from a regional discount retailer and you find forty or fifty items …

Two Envelopes, Two Verdicts, No Words Set a Tiffany & Co. box beside a saturated red-and-yellow discount circular and the eye renders its verdict before a single word is read. The robin's-egg blue signals restraint, luxury, and a price you should not have to ask about; the high-voltage red and yellow signal urgency, …

Price You Can Read Before You See a Number Set two catalogs on a table — a luxury home-goods book and a value-retail flyer — and cover every price with your thumb. You will still know, within a second, which one sells expensive things. The signal is the type. Luxury catalogs and value catalogs use typography to …