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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

“The Helvetica of music notation”

A 19-minute video from Tantacrul about a parallel universe that’s right next to ours, but most of us don’t get to think about – typography of fonts for music notation:

The video has some nice things going on besides specific details and conventions: there is a glimps of an obsolete app with a fascinatingly obtuse interface, a mention of modern standardization developments, and even a little (sad?) story of perfectionism and legacy.

I’m also kind of mesmerized by this shot of what music typesetting used to be:

There is also a short 1936 video showing more of that process. And small contribution from my end – a photo of the Keaton Music Typewriter from a museum in Catalonia: