I came think recently about how similar modern web marketing is to Benjamin Frankin's famous "Join, or Die" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join,_or_Die) political cartoon, which was used as political marketing. He made it simple so that the people, who were largely illiterate, could get it at a glance. Nowadays, the average person still doesn't want to read more than a few words, especially in the fashion vertical.
I was wondering if anyone knew a good resource on this kind of thing - how symbols and images can be used to send a message. It's a topic that's a bit hard to search for on Google.