In 2000, Blinn was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the technology of educational use of computer graphics and for expository articles.

He is credited with formulating Blinn's Law, which asserts that rendering time tends to remain constant, even as computers get faster.

Animators prefer to improve quality, rendering more complex scenes with more sophisticated algorithms, rather than using less time to do the same work as before.

He is well known for creating animation for three television series: Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage; Project MATHEMATICS!

Blinn was affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology until 1995.