Meet the maker: Marcin Wichary | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Marcin Wichary’s book Shift Happens explores the 150-year evolution of keyboards, typing, and QWERTY as tools shaped by many people rather than a single inventor. His making process relies on rapid prototyping, experimentation, and frequent feedback, whether he is writing, designing, coding, or preparing print materials. The project demonstrates how play and iteration can make a complex, long-term creative effort manageable.

The History and Meaning of Keyboards

• The book examines how keyboards evolved from typewriters to teletypes, computers, and modern devices.
• Although keyboards seem functional and unremarkable, their role has changed significantly:
  • They were once primarily used for producing documents.
  • Today, they are often used for chatting, texting, and online communication.
• QWERTY’s history reflects collective technological development; its designer is effectively “everybody and no one.”

A Prototyping-Based Creative Process

• Wichary builds small versions of ideas, evaluates them, and shares them with others.
• He began designing the book’s layout before finishing the manuscript.
• Custom plugins automated the flow of text and images into the print layout.
• He ordered a print-on-demand prototype as soon as the first manuscript was ready, before completing proofreading.
• He tested difficult print scenarios, including:
  • Black pages
  • Vivid colors
  • Highly detailed photographs
  • Specific paper and page sizes
• Iteration often made the project feel unfinished and chaotic, but embracing that uncertainty helped him improve the work.

Using Experiments to Sustain Momentum

• To avoid becoming overwhelmed by writing, research, and image licensing, Wichary created small experimental projects.
• He:
  • Reverse-engineered vintage keyboards and connected them to modern computers.
  • Built unusual keyboards, including a piano-based typing keyboard.
  • Tested exceptionally good and bad keyboards.
  • Created mini-games and a typewriter simulator.
• These projects were partly useful for research but also helped preserve his enjoyment of the subject.

Reviving the Gorton Typeface

• Wichary recreated Gorton, a distinctive technical typeface associated with 1980s keyboards and CNC machinery.
• Because it had never been released as a TrueType font, he redrew it in Figma and refined it in Glyphs.
• The work connected to his first Figma project, which involved type-design tools, and gave him an opportunity to use those tools as a practicing type designer.

Figma as a Book and Collaboration Tool

• He used Figma for:
  • Moodboards
  • Print layouts
  • Website and Kickstarter designs
  • Newsletter materials
  • Color systems
  • Reusable layouts through auto layout
• Plugins helped manage complex layouts that had to be revised repeatedly.
• Figma’s sharing features made it easy to solicit feedback from people unfamiliar with the tool.
• Comments, voting, and canvas annotations supported collaboration with friends, designers, and remote 3D artists.

Feedback as Part of Making

• Wichary built a custom app to gather reactions to individual book chapters through a private URL.
• Reviewers could respond using emojis or short comments.
• The app made feedback more accessible and provided a refreshing break from writing.
• Building a purpose-specific tool also made the feedback process enjoyable rather than purely evaluative.

The project’s central lesson is to combine disciplined iteration with playful experimentation. Prototypes, small tools, and early feedback can expose problems sooner while keeping a demanding creative project engaging.