HCI Illustrations

Robert Spellman illustration of a welder working on shiny steel.

I attended Massachusetts College of Art in the late 1960s and early 70s. During some of those years I studied graphic design and illustration. When I finally graduated, it was with a degree in painting and fine art. Later I made some half-hearted forays into the world of textbook illustration and technical manuals. In 1982 I was hired to do some cover illustrations for a new trade magazine called Hydro Review. The publisher was a graduate student at Harvard Business School and the magazine was her senior thesis. The magazine took root and grew to become HCI Publications. I did most of their cover illustrations for twenty-eight years – over two hundred covers in all. The magazine re-visited a number of themes each year and my job was to come up with a cover image that didn't look like a re-hash. To be honest, the success rate was mixed. Still, I'm grateful to the magazine's publishers for sticking with me. I used the job as an opportunity to learn airbrush, a demanding and nerve-wracking technique dating back to the late 1800s, and more recently to learn the digital tools of both illustration and print design. The latter has re-kindled my interest in design. (When I studied this in college, computers were still mostly science fiction.) The selection following includes some of my favorites. I'm glad you're not able to see the ones that are not.

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