Weekly email · Issue 042

The Bench

The MCU Atlas newsletter. Each issue is one data file rendered to email-safe HTML. Display type ships as images so it looks the same in Gmail and Outlook; everything else is live text.

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The Bench #42: a synth you can't play wrong

A Pico 2 chord synth, a coin-cell cadence sensor, and why the nRF52840 deserves a look.

Blocks

Top to bottom, as they appear in the issue.

01
MastheadPNG
Logo and ‘The Bench’ wordmark. Issue number and date sit beside it as live text. /newsletter/img/masthead
02
HeadlineLive text
Halyard Display 400 at 44px (34px on phones). An image fallback stays at /newsletter/img/headline?text= if you need pixel-exact type.
03
IntroLive text
One paragraph, 17/27, system sans.
04
Build of the weekPNG + text
Cover art PNG, title, spec strip as a 4-cell table, coral button.
05
Quick buildsPNG + text
Three rows with 96 px square covers.
06
Board of the weekText
Pistachio panel with a mono spec table and an ink button.
07
From the benchText
Short news lines, each tagged with its platform colour.
08
FooterText
Ink panel, view-in-browser and unsubscribe merge tags.

Email typography

Role	How
Display	Live textHalyard Display via the Adobe kit's @import (Apple Mail, iOS and other web-font clients), else -apple-system → Segoe UI → Helvetica → Arial.
Headings & body	Live textHalyard Text via the same @import, with the same system fallback. Gmail and Outlook show the fallback.
Labels & specs	Live textJetBrains Mono where supported, else Menlo → Consolas → Courier New.

For the backend

New issue: copy src/content/newsletter/issue-042.ts, or build the same object from your CMS.
Render: renderNewsletterHtml(issue, { baseUrl }) in src/lib/newsletter/render.ts.
Image URLs must be public and absolute; set NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL in production.
Dark mode: the email pins a light scheme (color-scheme meta). Gmail and Outlook apps may still invert it; every PNG has a solid background so headlines stay legible either way.
Merge tags left for your email service: {{unsubscribe_url}}, {{view_in_browser_url}}.