On February 1, Robert Tinney, the illustrator whose airbrushed cover paintings defined the look and feel of pioneering computer magazine Byte for over a decade, died at age 78 in Baker, Louisiana, according to a memorial posted on his official website.
As the primary cover artist for Byte from 1975 to the late 1980s, Tinney became one of the first illustrators to give the abstract world of personal computing a coherent visual language, translating topics like artificial intelligence, networking, and programming into vivid, surrealist-influenced paintings that a generation of computer enthusiasts grew up with.
Tinney went on to paint more than 80 covers for Byte, working almost entirely in airbrushed Designers Gouache, a medium he chose for its opaque, intense colors and smooth finish. He said the process of creating each cover typically took about a week of painting once a design was approved, following phone conversations with editors about each issue’s theme. He cited René Magritte and M.C. Escher as two of his favorite artists, and fans often noticed their influence in his work.
A phone call that changed his life
Born on November 22, 1947, in Penn Yan, New York, Tinney moved with his family to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a child. He studied illustration and graphic design at Louisiana Tech University, and after a tour of service during the Vietnam War, he began his career as a commercial artist in Houston.
His connection to Byte came through a chance meeting with Carl Helmers, who would later found the magazine. In a 2006 interview I conducted with Tinney for my blog, Vintage Computing and Gaming, he recalled how the relationship began: “One day the phone rang in my Houston apartment and it was Carl wanting to know if I would be interested in painting covers for Byte.” His first cover appeared on the December 1975 issue, just three months after the magazine launched.
Over time, his covers became so popular that he created limited-edition signed prints that he sold on his website for decades. “A friend suggested once that I should select the best covers and reproduce them as signed prints,” he said in 2006. “Byte was gracious enough to let me advertise the prints when they could fit in an ad (it did get bumped occasionally), and the prints were very popular in the Byte booth at the big computer shows, two or three of which my wife, Susan, and I attended per year. When an edition sold out, I then put the design on a T-shirt.”