Artisan keycap, with HIBI
Here were some initial concepts I tried for an Artisan Keycap. I liked the idea of making something that has a lot of tactility to it, to embrace the tenets in the initial SLK profile design.
I changed the dish to have some graduating concentric circles, to create the same idea as the dish in the normal plastic SLK keycaps, but with a "CNC" take on it.
We decided to collaborate with HIBI, a well-known and reputable artisan keycap/keyboard designer.
For this collaboration, I provided the original design for the collab. The legends for SLK Dessau that Kema designed were inspired by camera lens markings, so I riffed off the same idea and made an artisan keycap resembling a camera lens.
This is the design I sent them.
HIBIs involvement was pretty much just refining the design, resolving any practical issues, and getting it manufactured.
Here is the first round of adjustments they sent back, which I approved of to have made into a physical prototype.
Their changes included some dimensional adjustments for fitment while considering the anodized finish, and also adjusting the dimensions on those graduated circles to make it a little more apparent. Also while my design had a curved bead in the middle to make the "inner lens" part, HIBI simplified it by changing it into a black enamel infill.
We had this design prototyped. Unfortunately, the resin infill made everything just look like a glossed out black pearl, and you couldn't see the details under it. So this was a failure.
On the bright side, we were able to use the keycap for fitment testing, and everything fit on keyboards perfectly!
So we did another design iteration, removing the clear resin infill, and further accentuating the depth of the graduating rings. I think these ended up being a cooler design in the end, and brings back the concept of "tactility" that I initially set out to do.
Artisan knob, with Protoza Studio
Here was one of my concepts for the Artisan Knob collaboration. It looked cool and captured the right aesthetic, but didn't really feel fitting for a keyboard.
This is a different artisan knob concept I did, which was more focused on the idea of tacility - like the artisan keycap. The top has a curved dish with the same exact radius as the plastic SLK profile keycaps.
There was also a cutout hole in the middle, which exposes a red dot from the inner piece - this embraces the focus on material and rawness in the design. It also creates another interesting texture, and same for the sides.
I think the aesthetics didn't really look great, but I think all the core ideas seem solid and could shine with some more polish.
So I iterated on it some more, working on the internals and making it look cooler and feel better.
For this one, I took my concept and pitched it as a collaboration to Protoza Studio. It ended up as a similar process, where they took my idea and refined it and handled all the practical considerations for manufacturing for me.
After some back and forth riffing on my idea with them, this is what we ended up with as adjustments after the collab. I love how this turned out!
Leather goods, with Turbulent Labs
For the leather goods collaboration with Turbulent Labs, we went directly to them.
This process was quite different and I had much less direct involvement in it. Here we just talked about the concepts that inspired the keycap set and some of the design ethos we want to show in it, and the vibes we want to give. Then they basically took that and made variants of their existing leather goods products that match it.
I provided vector assets for things like the debossed parts (not shown, it's underneath). And helped out with the renders (the keyboard render here I made - and they just composited it together to make this full image).
