Pink Floyd Ethos Pathos Logos

There is nothing better than music. With countless songs, artists, and genres of music in this world, there cannot be just the sound of music or singing. People want visuals to their favorite sounds as well. They love the music videos, album covers, posters, and magazines. Music Icons magazine pays tribute to very influential and popular bands of all time essentially. On the cover of this particular edition, “Pink Floyd” printed across the top in large, black letters with the subheadings: “The Story Behind Every Album” in red letters and “50 Year Salute to Rock’s Most Mysterious Band” below that in black letters. At the very top of the cover, the band’s most popular album’s covers are at the top in chronological order of when they were released. There is a white brick pattern background and along the bottom are the band’s four main members in black and white. This edition was printed in 2015 in the United Kingdom and the articles inside are not credited to one particular writer. The cover seems simple but it is still effective. Music Icons effectively reaches their target audience of Pink Floyd fanatics, along with people who might have heard of the band, but do not know anything about them through pathos, logos, and slight lack of

ethos.

One of the most powerful human emotions to appeal to is nostalgia.

A sentimental longing for the past. That is what pathos is all about, appealing to the audience’s emotions. With this cover, an older individual who remembers hearing Dark Side of the Moon for the first time is enticed to take a second look. All of those memories of the album and that time period come flooding back and they reminisce on how different the sound was. The songs rivulet into one another and the music is timeless. For the people that do not know much or anything at all about Pink Floyd, their curiosity is sparked. They are inquisitive about not only the band, but the magazine and its contents as well. This is where ethos, or lack thereof, becomes

effective.
This is not a magazine a person would see standing in line at the grocery store. It does not have a title that comes to mind right away. Being able to find only the cover, no website for Music Icons and only seeing it online to be bought or sold between individuals on other websites, such as EBay or Craigslist it seems the credibility, or ethos, is lost. In this instance, the credibility of the magazine or content is not lost, but used to an advantage. Music Icons is not a magazine that is massed produced and filled with nonsensical stories. It is music memorabilia. It is something people want to take care of when they buy it. All of the magazines produced include the stories behind albums, songs and just influence popular artist had and still have on music today. What seems like a lack of credibility turns into rarity. Collectors want it and people that do not know anything about Pink Floyd want it for the same reason. It might appeal to some just because of the art.
Album cover art is just like the cover of a magazine. It tells the listener a little about the style and the mood of the artists. So the design for this magazine cover was carefully thought out for the intended audience. The album covers at the top are well known, amazing pieces of simple art to a Pink Floyd fanatic, and arousing for artists, not just PF fans. They might be simple, but
they are iconic everywhere. Dark Side of the Moon’s cover is a prism. There is no words, just a triangle with a rainbow, but yet that album is still one of the most popular albums of all time. The brick background, representing a wall, is effective because Pink Floyd’s album The Wall is all about a man building up a metaphorical wall of isolation. In the same way, PF has done the same thing. They have a sound like no other and there is depth to the lyrics some people just will not understand. The four members on the cover are in black and white as to say they are hardly seen and not being acknowledged for their own individual images. Also, they are in black and white because there was not just four members, there was a fifth and the colors symbolize an incompleteness among them. Syd Barrett, who they lost right after The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was released in 1967, was a musical genius. That is the first album cover on the magazine, and not a very popular album but it features Syd before he disappeared. The intended audience of collectors know about this fifth missing member and hope for some redemption of his creativity in the magazine. The other intended audience is intrigued by the mystery. Both audiences are affected by the design, the known and the unknown.
Music is one of the best things ever created. There are hundreds of genres and styles: country, jazz, pop, heavy metal to name a few. People have their favorites and least favorites, and they will disagree with one another. They might not have a single thing in common, but they hear a song they both enjoy and all of differences are put aside. All of things that tore them apart are forgotten for the duration of that song. They do not care where the other person came from, what they look like, or any dissimilarities that existed between them before. There is connection, though it is small it matters so much in a period of such disconnection. The link between them