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I’m still working on Susuwatari, but more sets are coming out soon. Long time ago I was contacted by a manufacturer that wanted to release some of my designs. They asked what could be our first project together and I immediately said: “Elvish! and Russian!”.
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In just a couple of days I’ve got dozens of comments, emails and people reaching out on reddit/skype/slack. Thanks everybody for the great support and feedback!
So, it looks like I’ve been a little selfish and I didn’t think that other designers and creators might be interested in releasing their creations in double-shot MT3. Some of them contacted me and asked to make the legends a bit more “vanilla” so they would be better suited for a wider range of sets and color schemes.
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So /dev/tty1 is finally out into the wild, round two is going nice and smooth and it’s time to move on to the next project.
It’s some time we are toying with the idea of a double-shot version of the MT3 keycap profile and it looks like Massdrop has just greenlighted the project.
I mostly worked on dye-sublimation lately, so I was forced on light schemes. You can’t have a legend that is lighter than the background with sublimation (yeah, okay you technically can with negative printing… but let’s leave it for now), so this time around I wanted to go dark!
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Long time I haven’t posted an update about the second round of /dev/tty. As you all well know I wasn’t very happy with the dye-sub quality of the first drop and –honestly– how Massdrop handled the whole development phase.
Fortunately this time things are moving smoother. I’m getting prototypes at a constant pace and the first impression is very good.
Some of you may have noticed that /dev/tty has dropped again. Waaaay sooner than I expected actually. As you know by now I don’t like to rush a product release and considering the round 1 hiccups, I would have liked a couple of weeks more to plan a good fight strategy.
Anywho. Device Terminal (that’s how you pronounce it!) round 2 is up and kicking. The official name would be /dev/tty1 (it’s 0-based) and we have approximately a month to fix the issues we encountered in the first iteration. Namely the drunken legends. MassDrop reassure me that they made so no more bold, tilted, not-centered legends will leave the factory. I hope they will let me check that before shipping to customers.
Warning: this is a rant.
Important: the following reflects my opinion and my opinion only. I report the facts at the best of my knowledge/understanding but they are not necessarily accurate.
Of course I’m going to talk about /dev/tty keycaps set and the MT3 profile. The two are actually very different projects.
MT3 is the new profile we designed. It was a long process but it went relatively smooth. We had many iterations of the keys, I got plenty of prototypes both 3D printed and injected. We were able to fine tune the shape up to the very last minute. Indeed the profile came out beautifully, better than my expectations actually. The result is a wonderful new and original profile.
I was expecting the same process to happen for /dev/tty which is the first color scheme released on MT3.
It has been a long journey but it was well worth the wait. I’m usually very critical with my own work but this time we are pretty much close to perfection.
Let’s start with the keys layout. The most avid of my followers know that we designed a completely new profile called –very unoriginally– MT3. The goal was to create a retro looking shape without sacrificing ergonomics. I’m typing on these little guys from some time now and it’s incredible how natural and pleasing these keycaps feel.
I just received a new batch of prototypes. These hopefully are the very last prototypes I’ll see before the pre-production samples.
We had some issues selecting the –hell too many– colors present in the /dev/tty set and that took more time than I anticipated. Also finding the right legend thickness took some trial and error but the manufacturer has been very helpful and I’m glad to let you know that everything is sorted out.
I’m possibly biased but these are the best keycaps ever produced on planet Earth.
It has been a quiet couple of months but the work on MT3 profile and /dev/tty keycaps is proceeding at a steady pace.
The first step was to 3D print a full set of keys to check the ergonomics of our new design. We made very few updates to make sure that everything was spot on and then we proceeded to production. What you see pictured here is the very first batch of PBT injected prototypes. They are not final by any means, the color is not finalized yet and we still have to work on the surface texture, but we are getting closer to the real deal and I wanted to share with you the progress.
By now you should know that we were working hard to find new ways to release the WhiteFox.
Massdrop is a great platform with a huge user base but of course you have to compromise when dealing with big companies. BUT. The WhiteFox is our baby, Input Club and I felt that we couldn’t keep compromising and we needed a way to finally release our keyboard the way it was always meant to be.
So the time has finally come. We are releasing the WhiteFox our own, under our terms and with our very strict quality control. With Massdrop we lost control over the production process and we ultimately had to agree with certain company policies. This time the sky is the limit and hopefully with your help we’ll make the WhiteFox better than already is.
So. In less than an hour the project should be available on Kickstarter. While you wait let me illustrate the main difference with the previous releases.