How To Ask for Help When Buying a Keyboard
Figure 1: This is the keyboard of someone (0range) who clearly knows how to ask proper questions. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been lurking around the channels of a couple of different entry level keyboard forums and I have to admit that the experience is quite bleak. I’m not saying this because of “toxicity” or people being given wrong information, rather I see so many people’s questions going unanswered… and to be honest they’re kind of to blame for it. While I recognize that not everyone coming freshly into the keyboard space enters it with the same level of inquisitiveness that I did when I first joined back in 2017, these questions going unanswered really feel way under-thought or over-thought compared to where I was. On one hand, you get questions like this: What is best gaming keyboard? And on the other hand, you get questions like this: Hi, there everyone! I am just now starting to look into mechanical keyboards as an avid gamer and I need some help in...
Aug 28, 2024
WHAT IS IT? The Mechanical Keyboard Community Keycap Set Design Contest is an event where community members can submit, vote on, and then buy community designed keycap sets.
We’re absolutely thrilled to be able to run this competition. We’ve received requests from countless community members for events like this and ways to be a part of the design and selection process. Our ability to make things for the community and by the community is what makes Massdrop special. That being said, this is the first time we’re doing this. We have a lot of ideas for how we can make this better over time, and would love to make something like this into a regular event. For this to work, we’ll need not just your participation, but also your feedback as we go through the experience and figure out what works and what doesn’t. At any time you have feedback, please submit it here: http://dro.ps/contestfeedback
THE CONTEST This isn’t your average contest. Anyone can submit their designs, but it’ll take a bit of skill to make sure it’s done right. We want to make it clear all along the way how you can take part as the process can be quite technical. In short, this is how the contest will go:
1. Submissions: Send your designs to us via this link: http://dro.ps/submitdesign **Note: if you have issues with the link or upload you can email your submission to communitykeyboards@massdrop.com 2. Voting Period: One week to build hype for your design. 3. Winner Selection: Most votes wins. 4. Drop Launch: The keycap set becomes available on Massdrop.com.
5. Keycap Production: Massdrop begins making the keycaps.
· Submission Period Start: Friday, September 15th 5:00PM PST · Submission Period End: Friday, September 29th 11:59PM PST · Voting Period Start: Within ~7 days of submission period ending. · Voting Period End: ~7 days from start of voting. · Winner Announcement: Will be announced within ~7 days of voting period.
CONTEST NOTES When submitting your design, you’ll want to make considerations for the profile, material, and legends. Below, are the four main options that we’ll be able to design this keycap set for. Read the details below to learn more and ask us any questions if they arise. Please note: We know we’re going to receive a lot of creative designs and we’ll remain transparent throughout receiving everyone’s submissions to make sure we’re clear on what’s feasible and what isn’t feasible to produce.
Profile / Material / Legends
1. GMK Cherry / ABS / Doubleshot 2. DSA / ABS / Doubleshot 3. DSA / PBT / Dye sublimation 4. XDA / PBT / Dye sublimation
NOTE: SA profile is not available for this contest due to production lead times.
Novelties, Colorways, and Legends: If you have a great idea for novelty keycaps we encourage you to take a crack at it. Please note that there are manufacturing constraints for both doubleshot and dye sublimation. There are going to be instances where the design is not manufacturable. We will try to work with designers to arrive at a point where something can be made - but if this is not possible, we reserve the right to take that particular design out of the running.
In terms of colorway, we encourage you to be wild with it but with the caveat that more colors can equal more complications. There are instances where manufacturers have refused to make sets due to manufacturing constraints - or where what’s been asked is not possible period (i.e dye sublimating a lighter legend onto a darker keycap). In these instances we aim to alert designers to problems - but time constraints and other factors means we might have to take offending designs out of the running.
Legends on DSA / GMK doubleshot keycaps are based on the standard tooling that are available to Signatures Plastics and GMK respectively. While custom tooling (example here include the cyrillics kit for GMK Yuri) is potentially an option - it should not be expected unless you know what you are doing.
Legends for dye sublimation will use Signatures Plastics’ standardized DSA font unless otherwise noted. There are many constraints for developing new fonts / legends for dye sublimation and we reserve the right to take any of the running that are deemed unfeasible.
PROCESS
1. Keyboard Design Requirements: We’ve created templates so people know how to create a set. The sets will cover the following keyboards - Full Size, 1800, 980M, 96 Key, Winkeyless, 75% (KBD75, Duck Octagon, etc), Rama M65-A, Magicforce 68/VA68M, WhiteFox (all layouts).
There are two different templates you can use for the contest. When you decide which profile to design for, use the appropriate template below:
Uniform (DSA, XDA, etc): http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/223ab9835bc3173e095eae6c4b060d79
NOTE: Make sure you view our contest rules below (and don’t do anything illegal and using copyrighted materials or infringe on existing keycap sets).
2. Keyboard Design Submission:
Submit your design by using the form here: http://dro.ps/submitdesign Follow the instructions in the form properly to make it easiest for us to process your design. If you have any issues at all with this, please e-mail communitykeyboards@massdrop.com.
3. Vote on Your Favorite Designs: Once all the designs have been submitted and verified, we’ll be posting them for a vote and inviting the whole mech keys community to vote on them.
4. Winning Design Announcement: We’ll contact that designer to sign our partnership agreement. Then we’ll announce the winner via an email and a new drop!
OFFICIAL CONTEST RULES
1. Cannot infringe on copyrighted materials. 2. Cannot infringe on keycap sets that have already been made. 3. The winning set will be produced so long as the winner signs our standard royalty agreement. 4. Due to long lead time, SA is not an available for this contest (we can make something for SA as a standalone in the future if these contests prove to be popular). 5. The terms of the agreement for the winner of this contest will be Massdrop’s standard 2% royalty on the design, and Massdrop will get exclusive rights to produce, manufacture and sell this design. If the winner based on votes does not agree to these terms within 5 business days, we’ll move on to the next winner by votes.
Full official contest rules here: https://www.massdrop.com/keycapdesigncontestrules
Please note: the winner can choose to opt out of the contest if they don’t want to agree to our standard royalty agreement.