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About me and the blog

My name is Marcin Wichary (he/him). I’ve worked as a UX designer, typographer, front-end person, and manager at Google, Medium, and Figma. I’ve also written a book about keyboards and typing, gave talks, and published essays about design, typography, and technology.

Unsung is my blog about software craft and quality.

More info about Unsung

Send me feedback, tips, bug reports, and anything else:

More info about Unsung

Sets of overlapping circles

This is a design joke that always makes me laugh:

This was made by… someone, a while back, I believe in response to the Twitter logo redesign of 2012, which showed the new logomark as composed of exclusively circles:

Now, to be clear: that Twitter logo redesign was gorgeous, and I do not particularly care if it was designed out of circles or whatever else. I don’t even think its announcement was presented in an overly pretentious way – it was nowhere near the 2008 bloviating Pepsi redesign or the rank amateurism of Yahoo’s 2013 logo.

It’s just… design can be so pretentious and up its own golden-ratioed ass, and I can’t help but love anything piercing that bubble. (In my perfect, naïve world, Doug Bowman – the designer behind the logo – also finds the joke hilarious!)

Also, I feel like design is just not… funny, all that often. Quick, think of any product design joke.

See what I mean?

I can’t, either. My favourite graphic design joke is “if it’s big and ugly, it’s not big enough.” (You know, it’s funny because it’s sad.)