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Community Keycap Set Design Contest

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⚠️ FINALIST VOTING IS NOW CLOSED:⚠️
Stay tuned to learn who won the contest


Now is your chance to bring your design to life.
This has been a long time in the making, and we’re excited to officially announce our first community keycap design contest! We hear from people all the time that they want more ways to get involved with the products we design especially in the Mech Keys community. This is a new way we're trying to give everyone the ability to take part in the process and to create new community designed keycap sets.
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.
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DATES
· 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
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Sculpted (GMK, etc): http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/9b4fbee9b389c1dabbb53e430dd79e09
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We require a specific template because that standardizes the process and makes this collaboration much more practical. In the future, we may add additional sets or have contests for specific sets.
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.

New to keyboard layouts? Here’s a handy talk post that explains the basics: https://www.massdrop.com/talk/947/keyboard-layouts-explained-in-detail-many-pics
And here's another talk post that should help explain the basics of keycap creation:

Questions? Ask us in the discussion below. Feel free to submit any feedback you have here:
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chisong
121
Oct 10, 2017
thank you!! thank you every one! GMK Neighbor go to the finals !!
HotRoderX
753
Oct 10, 2017
Ok I want to just say.... this is hard decision. There only one set I am luke warm on... the others are pretty amazing.
Duncan
3731
Oct 9, 2017
THE FINALIST VOTING ROUND IS NOW OPEN: http://dro.ps/finalists
Voting ends on Wednesday, October 11th at 11:59PM PST!!
elFick
319
Oct 25, 2017
Thanks! I completely missed that.
Duncan
3731
Oct 25, 2017
elFickNo worries. We're basically at the 'preparing the official drop' stage so you're basically all caught up. I'll be updating the Talk Post I just linked you when there's another update.
skabei
232
Oct 5, 2017
Updated my submission! Just in case people forgot how fluffy the Despicable me unicorn is hehehe.
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Briano.G
140
Oct 5, 2017
GMK Phantom
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briano1905
Ian6930087
16
Oct 12, 2017
Briano.GGod yes please
donutholer
206
Oct 23, 2017
Briano.Gthats nice
Duncan
3731
Oct 5, 2017
🔴 Greetings all! Voting has begun! See the Voting Talk Post here: https://www.massdrop.com/talk/2428/place-your-votes-in-the-keycap-set-design-contest
Best of luck to everyone!
gzou
2
Oct 5, 2017
Two colors is not enough colors. Here is a keyboard layout inspired by my editor color scheme (Espresso Libre). Also this is my first layout, all critics are welcomed.


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chisong
121
Oct 5, 2017
GMK neighbors ( DCS Rendering ) Unfortunately, I do not know how to make novelty. I'll make it if you help me. Tell me how
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and final design
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chisong
121
Oct 5, 2017
My color - (keycolor, legend color) (L9,N7) (AE,L9 ) (CC,L9)
Thank you!!! Thank you so much!! Is it possible to design a taro leaf?
Could you send me my design material by e-mail? chi1391@naver.com
chisong
121
Oct 5, 2017
I am waiting for your reply.
tevey
2
Oct 5, 2017
Please make sure to add ISO and nordeu caps to the winning submission, we in the nordics are always left out.
AstralTeam
54
Oct 4, 2017
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DSA Dolomite
Hi all! Here is my proposed keyset, pulling influence from my current setup in the office (DSA Granite), and the polar opposite DSA Dolch. This design combines the two together, with a glint of colour to give a little flare. In my mind, the overall look reminds me of a cluster of bright minerals embedded into rock, tying in well with the name. It calls back to classic keyboard styling, while also staying quite modern. If I could design a single dark keyset, this would be it.
Also I focused mainly on the colour scheme when putting this design together, so please ignore the mismatched legend sizing!
shadowkreep
515
Oct 9, 2017
AstralTeamIts Dolomite, Baby
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