[HN Gopher] The BYTE magazine covers by Robert Tinney
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The BYTE magazine covers by Robert Tinney
Author : LarryDarrell
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-09-21 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lunduke.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lunduke.substack.com)
| quantified wrote:
| Like album covers in a way. I so hated feeling like I had to
| ditch mine, only have 2 left.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Same feeling when I had to ditch my Heavy Metal magazine
| collection.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Hand drawn covers really made it feel like a zine. I subscribed
| to Nibble since I was an Apple hacker, and it was more of a
| garage-hacker chic than the polished Byte, but still had the same
| style cover art.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I just want to point out that a lot of magazine covers from
| Popular mechanics to cosmopolitan sort of introduced me to the
| world of design. I grew up in a really boring little seaside town
| and outside of the beach, we only had a library. That library is
| still there and is a treasure trove of 70s-90s magazines in their
| store room. As kids we'd just spend hours on hours just reading
| old magazines.
|
| Being born in the early 90s - I grew up in the 00s but there was
| something very distinct about the 60s-70s style which we call
| retro-futurism now but it was clean cut, faded beige and straight
| lines that influence a lot of designers till this day. It hit
| different.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I love the one he made for the BYTE "Smalltalk" (the one with the
| air balloon)
|
| Apparently here's some signed artwork:
|
| http://www.smalltalk-80.com
| raphlinus wrote:
| The balloon in the artwork I had made for my undefined behavior
| blog post[1] was an homage to that cover.
|
| [1]:
| https://raphlinus.github.io/programming/rust/2018/08/17/unde...
| xbar wrote:
| All my best computer journalism memories are from staring at Byte
| covers and then reading them cover to cover.
|
| Thank you for reasons to find a collection to go buy.
| Zenst wrote:
| Yes and some top-end technical stuff, that in many ways you can
| only get in a bit here and a bit there kinda way upon the web
| today.
|
| One memory of magazines back then, I enjoyed reading the
| adverts and it is ironic as I probably spent more time upon
| adverts in a single edition of Byte than I do upon adverts in
| over a year upon the web. How times change. But darn, I miss
| the hardcopy Byte magazine. Also miss my vast collection that
| got lost over several moves in life. Though still have a few.
|
| However, one magazine of that era I have equal fondness for was
| Unix World 84-95.
|
| But at least I have a few copies of them still.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I loved and I miss BYTE magazine.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| What's interesting is, looking at back issues, it could still
| be relevant today, with up-to-date content.
|
| Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar is still going
| (https://circuitcellar.com/), and Hacker News contains links to
| similar content regarding the latest and greatest hardware and
| programming languages. I can picture the Byte take on Apple's
| processors in my head.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It was a different age. Somehow this industry lost something
| when it became mainstream and as much as I rely on the web it
| is like drinking from a firehose.
|
| Dr Dobbs was great as well.
| quantified wrote:
| +1. Dates us, but the magazine and the era itself fit so well
| together I thought.
| gandalfian wrote:
| In UK Maplins mail order catalogue used to get me every time. So
| exciting on the cover. Inside just components and soldering irons
| (admittedly appreciated by some)
| https://www.google.com/search?q=maplins+catlogue+covers&tbm=...
| timthorn wrote:
| And mini datasheets for lots of the chips they sold - it was a
| proper reference manual.
| cogburnd02 wrote:
| For SHAME! He skipped the Star Trek one! ;-)
|
| https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-12
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yes, that's one of the most famous covers. I got that issue and
| several others free a few years back - there had been a garage
| sale and they were just giving away everything that was left
| over. There were boxes & boxes of Byte magazines. I didn't have
| room for all of them, but I picked out about 6 of them.
| musicale wrote:
| These covers are fantastic - sort of like Magritte meets 1980s
| Silicon Valley.
|
| Robert Tinney is an amazing artist whose work deserves
| recognition.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I knew the son of the editor of BYTE back in the early 90s going
| to college in New Hampshire. Most people probably don't realize
| that BYTE was headquartered in a tiny NH town about as far from
| Silicon Valley - both physically and culturally - as you can get.
| Though it was close to the Boston area - where a lot of computing
| happened in the early days before mostly moving to California -
| Peterborough is a quaint New England town that may not have had a
| stop light back then. When I moved to NH in the late 80s, the
| public schools were still all using Apple IIs from a decade
| earlier. The idea that a major tech magazine was being written
| there pre-internet still makes me shake my head in wonder.
| christkv wrote:
| It feels like we lost something when byte disappeared. Is there
| anything like it these days?
| timthorn wrote:
| I certainly lost something - I purchased a 3 year subscription
| with my first pay cheque, a month before it ceased publication
| :(
| threeio wrote:
| Wayne Green (byte's publisher) was an interesting character
| overall. Not surprising that he would value the cover art as much
| as he did
| mountain_peak wrote:
| Coincidentally, I was just reading "See Wayne Run. Run, Wayne,
| Run." [0] yesterday. Not sure if it's a character assassination
| or a valid warning to others. Lots of other interesting reading
| in the collection regardless.
|
| [0] https://archive.org/details/Wayne_Green_Misc
| mattbee wrote:
| I love these too, I've got a "Future Computers?" print in my hall
| - https://i.redd.it/ia6vwdigsjfz.jpg
|
| For a while http://tinney.net/ had a catalogue of available
| prints, then it went down for a while, now it's back with just an
| email address for people wanting prints. They do come up on eBay
| too.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I was watching "Transatlantic Tunnel" from 1935 yesterday, and
| was amused at how the engineers were conducting zoom meetings!
| mtm wrote:
| Yep, I got the FORTH cover a few years ago, looks great:
|
| https://x0r.be/@mtm/106310373200174194
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| Oh how cool to see the Apollo 11 stamp! I'm having my mom's
| framed right now after finding it in her basement.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Forth is cool!
| ggambetta wrote:
| In the Spanish-speaking world, Jose Maria Ponce [0] was equally
| legendary with his equally epic covers for Microhobby [1], a
| magazine covering the ZX Spectrum in the 80s and early 90s.
|
| Not only the covers are beautiful and witty, he always signed
| them PONCE but in very non-obvious places, so part of the fun of
| getting a new issue was to find the signature. Some are very
| cleverly hidden and _ridiculously_ hard to find [2].
|
| [0]
| https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Ponce_Sai...
|
| [1] http://portadasmh.speccy.org/Prev1.html
|
| [2] https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhf/030/MH030_01.jpg
| diskzero wrote:
| Those covers are great! They remind me of the Choose Your Own
| Adventure book covers from the 80s. I don't know what what
| style to call those illustrations other than _awesome!!!_
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Oliver Frey was famous in the UK for his covers for
| Spectrum/C64/Amstrad magazines (Crash/Zzap! 64/Amtix):
| https://twitter.com/retroscifiart/status/986035057973346304
| matsemann wrote:
| In the same vein (but different theme) I remember searching for
| D.U.C.K hidden in the covers made by Don Rosa for Donald as a
| kid.
|
| https://duck.neamar.fr/
| 101008 wrote:
| Wow. I am from Argentina, and although not this one, we
| received some magazines from Spain in the 90s. That's who I
| learnt that Spain currency was the Peseta (and a few idioms as
| well!). I have good memories spending some afternoon reading
| them.
| ggambetta wrote:
| I grew up in Uruguay, so Microhobby definitely made it to the
| Rio de la Plata :) Which ones did you get? Micromania was
| also popular there.
| christkv wrote:
| I spent my summer vacations reading my uncle's microhobby
| collection. Such a great magazine.
| ketzo wrote:
| These are gorgeous, thank you for the links.
| nbzso wrote:
| The sad part is that this aesthetic even "modernized" enough will
| not be approved by any major media outlet of today.
|
| Mainly because "the trends" are pseudo stylized 3d or flat shapes
| with childishly over-saturated colors.
|
| I miss the time when trying to create something unique and deep
| visually was properly rewarded. And from the looks of it I am not
| alone.
| redler wrote:
| One notable exception is the cover of every week's New Yorker.
| rchaud wrote:
| The message and the medium are inextricably linked.
|
| This level of detail is feasible for a paid periodical that can
| afford to commission original art that would sit on a desk or
| coffee table for a while. Today I doubt people would even buy a
| print computer magazine whose information is a month old.
|
| For today's world of instant, disposable information,
| distributed via video, podcast, web page or serialized via
| tweets several times a day, this art would also become
| disposable. It'd be instantly forgotten amidst a sea of
| templated, corporate-friendly clip art ("assets") from Canva
| and Adobe Spark.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Aesthetics change. You similarly couldn't grab magazine covers
| from the early 1900s either. That doesn't mean the work is bad.
| Everything has a place and time, and in the future the current
| artwork will look dated as well.
| dekhn wrote:
| I remember reading BYTE for years. I had completely forgotten the
| experience after surfing the web for 30 years.
|
| The ads are my favorite. "386 with 2MB RAM and 10MB hard drive
| for $5K"
| Zenst wrote:
| I see how the C64's, Amiga's and Atari's did so well back then.
| But I too enjoyed the adverts back then - pure geek porn in
| those days and back then you would read everything - adverts
| included. Today, complete polar opposite approach to
| advertising.
| dkural wrote:
| The Turkish version of BYTE was the best computing magazine
| throughout the 90s! Great memories reading them under my desk in
| school.
| magicink81 wrote:
| Limited edition Byte Magazine cover illustration prints are still
| available: http://tinney.net/
| larrywright wrote:
| My junior high school library had Byte magazine. I remember
| looking through the past issues a lot, and these covers bring
| back fond memories.
| elymar wrote:
| At my company we work with water distribution network modeling.
| Long before I joined, my predecessors commissioned Robert Tinney
| for some art for our marketing and literature. You can see some
| examples here:
| https://communities.bentley.com/products/hydraulics___hydrol...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm wondering what topics of computer engineering still fit these
| types of covers and paper magazines?
|
| I think it has to be some topics that are not easily Googled,
| otherwise there is no purpose to buy a paper magazine.
|
| Retro computing, Computer virus research, anything else? It
| should be something deep and niche. The magazines should be
| monthly and each issue a few hundred of pages.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| I believe 2600 is still in print.
| lakkal wrote:
| It is: https://www.2600.com/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I'm still enjoying my $250 lifetime print subscription.
| Wonder if they still offer that.
| bityard wrote:
| One recent example I can think of is POC||GTFO:
| https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/
|
| Granted, it's not a paper magazine (although you can buy paper
| compendiums of it) and it's free to distribute. I think the
| world and technology has moved beyond paper for the
| distribution of knowledge. YMMV, but I see that as largely a
| good thing.
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(page generated 2021-09-21 23:00 UTC)