On February 1, Robert Tinney, the illustrator whose airbrushed cowl work outlined the feel and appear of pioneering laptop journal Byte for over a decade, died at age 78 in Baker, Louisiana, according to a memorial posted on his official web site.
As the first cowl artist for Byte from 1975 to the late Eighties, Tinney grew to become one of many first illustrators to offer the summary world of non-public computing a coherent visible language, translating subjects like synthetic intelligence, networking, and programming into vivid, surrealist-influenced work {that a} era of laptop lovers grew up with.
Tinney went on to color greater than 80 covers for Byte, working virtually fully in airbrushed Designers Gouache, a medium he selected for its opaque, intense colours and clean end. He said the method of making every cowl usually took a few week of portray as soon as a design was accepted, following telephone conversations with editors about every challenge’s theme. He cited René Magritte and M.C. Escher as two of his favourite artists, and followers typically observed their affect in his work.
A telephone name that modified his life
Born on November 22, 1947, in Penn Yan, New York, Tinney moved together with his household to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a toddler. He studied illustration and graphic design at Louisiana Tech College, and after a tour of service in the course of the Vietnam Struggle, he started his profession as a industrial artist in Houston.
His connection to Byte got here by way of an opportunity assembly with Carl Helmers, who would later discovered the journal. In a 2006 interview I performed with Tinney for my weblog, Classic Computing and Gaming, he recalled how the connection started: “Someday the telephone rang in my Houston condo and it was Carl eager to know if I might be occupied with portray covers for Byte.” His first cowl appeared on the December 1975 challenge, simply three months after the journal launched.
Over time, his covers grew to become so in style that he created limited-edition signed prints that he bought on his web site for many years. “A pal advised as soon as that I ought to choose one of the best covers and reproduce them as signed prints,” he stated in 2006. “Byte was gracious sufficient to let me promote the prints after they may slot in an advert (it did get bumped sometimes), and the prints have been very talked-about within the Byte sales space on the massive laptop exhibits, two or three of which my spouse, Susan, and I attended per 12 months. When an version bought out, I then put the design on a T-shirt.”
