Robert Tinney, the illustrator whose airbrushed cover art helped define the visual identity of the groundbreaking computer magazine Byte for more than a decade, died on February 1 at 78 in Baker, Louisiana, according to a memorial posted on his official website.
As Byte’s lead cover artist from 1975 until the late 1980s, Tinney was among the first to create a consistent visual vocabulary for the then-abstract realm of personal computing, turning subjects such as artificial intelligence, networking, and programming into vivid, surrealist-tinged paintings that shaped the imagination of a generation of tech fans.
Tinney produced over 80 covers for Byte, working almost exclusively with airbrushed Designers Gouache, a choice he made for its opaque, rich pigments and smooth finish. He recounted that once a concept was approved, each cover typically required about a week of painting after phone discussions with editors about the issue’s theme. He named René Magritte and M.C. Escher among his favorite influences, and fans frequently spotted echoes of their work in his illustrations.
A phone call that altered his path
Born November 22, 1947, in Penn Yan, New York, Tinney relocated with his family to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during his childhood. He studied illustration and graphic design at Louisiana Tech University, and after serving in the Vietnam War, he launched his career as a commercial artist in Houston.
His link to Byte began with a chance encounter with Carl Helmers, who later established the magazine. In a 2006 interview I conducted for my blog Vintage Computing and Gaming, he described how it started: “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 debut cover ran in the December 1975 issue, just three months after the magazine’s launch.
As his cover work gained popularity, he began issuing limited-edition signed prints that he offered through his website for many years. “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.”
