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I’m finally returning following a long break, this article covers the topic of hiring a designer for your group buy board, or for a one-off keyboard design. It took a while to get all the information together, as very little information is available publicly when it comes to commissioning designers. This week, we’ll dig into the basics of hiring a designer, what to know beforehand, what to expect price-wise, and why it’s so difficult to find designers to commission for a keyboard design.

This is part of a long series of posts covering the A-Z of how to run a group buy, I highly suggest you read the previous posts before reading through this one.

What to know beforehand

Knowing your basics will help you more easily communicate with your designer, and save you both time and potential wasted money. You should have a basic understanding of how the rough structure of a design works, enough so that the expectations are realistic, this includes sharp edges, thin areas, and nonsensical design elements. It’s also important to note that there could likely be issues with assembly, making the keyboard unusable – this could arise from simply expecting too much out of the design, or potential manufacturing issues. In addition, consider that one-offs are generally not given the same kind of treatment as group buy items regarding flaws and remakes, as there is only a single unit made, additional units cannot be used to replace it in the cause of any manu or finishing defects

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In general, the ideal commissioner:
A) Knows what they’re doing and understands the risks
B) Knows what is reasonable to commission
C) Won’t change plans halfway through the project

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For the sake of facilitating the whole experience for yourself, you should have the following prepared before even speaking to a designer:
-Layout, Size, Shape, Angle, and material of case
-Mounting style and case assembly style
-Plate material and cutout plans
-Any weights/emblems and their locations and materials (mock ups of any engravings would save the designer a lot of time if you have them in vector format)
-What type of finishing you plan for each part (this will affect how they are mounted, and hooked for anodized parts)
-A small mockup (just hand drawn) of the more complex areas will go a long way to reduce confusion and reduce the total amount of revisions
-A top-down and side-profile sketch will be handy to show exactly what sort of design you are going for

What to expect price-wise

Pricing for design work is variable, and depends on the complexity of the design, the case and mounting style, how many features you want (daughterboard, maglev plate, multi-weight, etc), and the total amount of revisions. Some designers will charge a fixed price (these are usually in the realm of 2-4k USD), while others will take a small flat rate at the start (250-500 USD), with a percentage on revenue for the group buy (ranging from 2-8%).

Here’s a selection of pricing from a few designers:
Designer 1: $250 for a basic design + 5% revenue from any buy. Features are charged from 25-50 depending on feature set
Designer 2: 5% of revenue, with some restrictions on minimum GB size
Designer 3: A large upfront cost (varies from 2-8k USD depending on design)

All designers preferred to remain anonymous

Why is it so hard to find commissioners

Through interviewing keyboard designers I noticed one common pattern; very few designers have any interest in dealing with design commissions. This arises from a variety of factors, from general lack of knowledge of what to expect when hiring a designer, to the simple fact that it may not make financial sense to even bother taking commissions…

When asked about the typical time investment for a commission, an unnamed designer had the following to say:

The same amount (of time) as I’d spend on one of my own projects and get paid multiple times more for

-Anonymous Designer

Considering the massive amount of work that can potentially go into a design, and the rather low profitability and risk of a product never even making it to market – It makes much more sense from a time and effort perspective for a designer to just design their own keyboards and run them themselves, or with a vendor they know and trust. This at least means that any issues that arise during the group buy workflow can be chalked up to “I fucked up” instead of “I got fucked over”

Consider learning design on your own

Considering the difficulty of finding a designer these days, as it does not make much sense for most designers to offer a commission service; it likely will be more realistic to learn design on your own. Keyboards are a great way to start learning CAD or Fusion or Inventor, as their complexity isn’t too overwhelming (compared to more functional objects). Of course it’s important to have a solid knowledge of how keyboards look, sound, and feel based off of minor design changes. But the process of the design itself is mostly extruding a piece, and then filleting and chamfering it until the desired effect is reached.

There are a great deal of resources to learn design, and if you are still in school, take the opportunity to pick up classes and activities on the side for CAD learning.

If you’re an old fart like me, there’s thousands of places to start learning online. I recommend starting with basic youtube videos until you are comfortable enough with your software of choice.

Hey all, I am finally back at it again, and it’s time to finally finish up the topic we started nearly a month ago, if you’ve already forgotten – we were covering the viability of a design, and we’ll pick up where that post left off.

First things first, this is a chapter in a long series of posts with the intention of teaching you everything you need to know about running a group buy, so I highly suggest you read the previous entries first!

Alright, you were promised a few weeks ago that we would cover “size and weight, competing designs, politics and current events, and defining a target audience.”

Let’s take it piece by piece and start with size and weight, when it comes to the viability of a keyboard design. Size can be a huge factor in the potential sales of a kit. It is well known that most newcomers to the hobby will likely purchase a 60% as their first custom keyboard – this is due to their lower, more appetizing price point, as well as the general groupthink that is “custom keyboards are small”

This means you naturally have a high chance of getting a decent moq with a 60% board, though this happens to scale down with sub 60% sizes as newcomers are usually not yet comfortable using such small layouts. It is good to note, that the size alone is not the primary factor for such high 60% sales, price point plays a large role here – as lower cost TKL or 65%s sell just fine. What this means for you is that if your design is large, that may not be an issue as long as you are ready to offer it at a competitive price point.

As a rule of thumb 60 sells best, followed by 65 and TKL, then other sizes follow

Now that size is covered, let’s talk weight. A simple 60 with no weight is pretty simple and cheap to machine/finish/qc, but a full steel 60, or a 60 with multiple weights is going to drive the price up very quickly. Aside from the obvious jump in machining costs, you have to carefully consider the cost of shipping units back and forth to the manu in case of any finishing or machining defects.

Let’s take a real world example into account, the illuminati i1 – The i1 final production model will weigh just shy of 9 kilos before packaging. Even at a fixed, small group buy size, the individual units weigh up to 5x as much as a simple 60%. Assuming a 20-40% failure rate per piece, and assuming shipping back and forth to a vendor in the US, we could easily be looking at shipping 111 kilos (250 lbs) around the world, maybe more than once!

In a case like this, it makes the most sense to fly to the manufacturer and qc the units in person, though the price difference in this case is negligible, the only benefit to qcing on location is saving time in this case.

Some other things to consider about high-weight boards includes the obvious high price of shipping to the final customer, no customer wants to be paying over $100 USD in shipping. And the additional weight means you will have to take more precautions as a GB runner to handle all of the units as carefully as possible, and protect them as well as possible while packing units.

Looking historically at GBs, when GB runners have offered a high-weight version of their keyboard, it was as a small-run, limited, and significantly more expensive option. This allows the GB runner to essentially offset the cost of making and handling the heavier boards into the combined GB cost.

Now this doesn’t mean that running large, heavy boards isn’t a viable business model – just as long as you are aware of the additional work and cost that needs to go into producing big and heavy boards…

Next up is competing designs:

Maybe you plan to run a simple, low cost TKL, or perhaps you’re going to hit the market with a layout no one has ever seen before. In either case, there will always be competition – as soon as your design has been made public, anyone who believes they can do it better than you will start work on a competing design. This design could potentially interfere with your sales, though based on historical GB data, it rarely has a sizable impact on GB sales. Examples of this include the Clavier m0110, TGR 910, OTD Corsa, and many others.

Don’t let a competing design bring you down, instead use it as an opportunity to specialize. If your design is meant to be low cost, keep the costs as low as you possibly can, and if you are targeting a higher end audience, make sure that the finishing and quality control are handled as well as possible.

This requires a constant knowledge of the ongoings in the custom keyboard hobby… If you are running a group buy, your daily reading should include geekhack’s IC and GB forums, as well as a run through most designer’s websites and social media posts. One of the worst things you can do is walk in with a design that happens to look a lot like someone else’s, and be unprepared for the inevitable comparison between your design and theirs. Having a good knowledge of potential competition will allow you to be able to specialize and differentiate your kit.

Time for some politics and current events!
You might think that events going on across the world have little impact on the keyboard market, but you’d be surprised. In general, you should have a good understanding about all of the countries you will be shipping to. For example, will you be under-declaring values when shipping to European countries? EU buyers generally will shy off a board if they know they’re going to end up paying an extra 100-150 Euros just to get it in the hands. How will you handle the current USA tariffs on a good chunk of Chinese goods, which includes some computer accessories and raw metals?

The most important bit of dealing with politics/current events is to do adequate research before sharing kit prices and shipping rates, understand that summer shipping rates are not the same as mid-December shipping rates for example. (Xmas break general sees a huge increase in shipping costs and delays). And understand the customer-side costs for shipping to them based on their geographical location.

Additionally, always have a contingency plan for delays that are out of your control. Packages go missing, manufacturers have delays, and sometimes entire countries are closed down for a bit – halting most trade. In cases like these, the most important tool in your arsenal is good communication – as long as your customers are aware of the reason for delays, and as long as there is a easily accessible line of communication between you and your customers, morale is kept high.

We will cover damage control in later blog posts, for now just be mentally prepared for anything that could possibly go wrong, and make sure you do your due diligence when it comes to current events and geopolitics before moving in to a group buy

Alright, last bit – Target audience

Knowing your target audience is pretty important to defining what direction your group buy will go… In general there are 2 main audiences, each with their own pros and cons. Although there are plenty of niche audiences within these two, as well as some overlap of the two, we will stick to the basics – being Entry level/low cost and High-end kits

Lets start with the pros and cons for targeting an Entry level audience:
Pros:
-Targeting a low price point makes it far easier to hit moq
-Assuming a streamlined GB process, there is less work to do per unit at qc phase

Cons:
-Your design will have to be limited in complexity to keep costs low
-Less experienced buyers might struggle with builds and damage their boards
-These buyers may not have a good knowledge of how GBs work and are more likely to complain about delays
-You will likely need to put more time and effort into customer support

And the pros and cons for targeting a Higher end audience:
Pros:
-Any wild design is fair game, allowing you to make very complex designs
-Generally the moq will be lower, which is easier to deal with when it comes to logistics
-The higher end market is generally more familiar with GBs and will be more understanding of potential delays

Cons:
-Customers will expect a certain grade of quality, so qc will be far more intensive and expensive
-As a result, there may be a large amount of wasted units, which will either have to be tossed out, or sold at far lower margins

Of course, audiences get a little bit more wild when you look at larger boards, or ergo/split boards… In general, it’s essential to have a good understanding of the audience you will be selling to, this will help you decide on design aesthetics, qc and packaging quality, how much to dedicate to customer support, as well as how to communicate with your audience. How to do so depends entirely on your audience, and you should be able to put yourself into the shoes of your potential customers and figure out what is most important to them.

There is so much more to group buy running than just this – but this is a good starting point to at least mentally prepare yourself and understand the real-world viability of your designs

We’ll catch up next week (hopefully) and talk about outsourcing a basic case design

We interrupt our regularly scheduled posts to bring an interview with Zambumon! you may know him from his successful keyset designs, or from his dashing good looks. Here we cover some points of discussion relating to product viability, and will pick up our scheduled topic next week.

What do you think is the most common reason for keysets failing to hit moq, or get off the ground?

Usually a combination of several factors: rushing ICs, high expectations from the designer(s) leading to too many kits, pricing, a poor marketing strategy and poor planning and the lack of commitment:

• Rushing ICs: meaning you start an IC for a set that is already scheduled: vendors, date… almost everything is ready. We don’t know yet if there is any interest for this set but we are going to run it anyway. Now, when I say rushing ICs I’m (in most cases) talking about brand new sets, not reruns of popular sets. Designers started to become more overconfident and vendors allowed it. Anyways, a case of this would be some of Kono’s sets (like GMK High Voltage).
• Overconfidence: “if GMK Handarbeit can make MOQ so can I”. I get it, it’s your design, you have expectations for it, you truly believe that it will be awesome and lots of people will join the GB and you have proxies and they will buy extras to help yada yada yada. Overconfidence leads to lots of kits, expensive kits and each of them has an MOQ. And if you have a set with just 2 kits and an MOQ of 250 and 100 respectively you might be fine, but when you have 6 kits? Good luck if things don’t go as great as planned. Everyone has been overconfident at some point, and vendors and the factory can help a little bit but they won’t do miracles.
• Pricing: this is due to the lack of perspective from the designer: Most people on this planet are broke, students, in high school and don’t have that much money. I will limit this example to core kits, but you can’t expect that most people will pay $170 or $150 for a base kit. And yep, even a $5 price difference matters. If you can make your set $110 instead of $115 it will have a noticeable impact. Fuck, consider that with huge kits getting extras is even harder for the vendors. That being said, and from my own experience: TKL Core kits are only ideal with high (500) or very high (1000) MOQs since the price would be around $100 and $90 respectively.
• Poor marketing strategy: a fancy way of pointing out issues about anything from the IC to the group buy page, lack of proper kit mockups (looking at you GMK High Voltage), lack of assets so the vendors can share the product on social media, poor planning (you can’t have a set in the IC stage for a year and expect the hype to be the same). Good planning helps a lot. People should know very well when a set is running and as a vendor you are also responsible of hyping that set.
• Overestimating the commitment of all the stakeholders: don’t expect vendors to buyout your set, specially if you make lots of kits. Don’t expect that your customers to get multiple extra kits if the set is having issues hitting MOQ.
• Lack of commitment from the designer: If you are a designer, assume your part as the designer of the set and how much you can afford to spend if things don’t go as well as you expected. Care about the shit you make and don’t yeet your project, you are the responsible of making things happen.

It seems that keysets from major makers/designers pretty much always do well, you think the people in the hobby are just afraid of buying from no-namers?

Not really, most people don’t care who designs the set but rather where they can get it. That being said, veteran designers have a track record which is incredibly useful when we are talking about color matching or kit issues. What matters is hard work and the commitment to the project, a great example of a newcomer smashing it would be pikku-allu.

Do you think ideas like these apply to the custom keyboard kit/case market?

In some ways yes, but I still think that keyset designers (as well as the group buy runners) need to learn more from customs than the other way around. For instance, I don’t like the idea of someone reaching the GB stage for the first time and already running a second or third IC for new sets. Specially because after the pre-order window some of the most critical tasks happen and there’s definitely work to do. And I get it, GMK will do their job and the vendors will ship the sets, but I think it’s a part of proving that you (as a designer) are capable of doing things right. Obviously, running a keyboard group buy is way more scary, complicated and it’s definitely not as easy as working with GMK BUT an experienced keyboard group buy runner is similar to an experienced keyset designer as they both understand what they can and cannot promise (color finishes and options vs kits), they are both more cautious with timelines and quality of what they sell and usually they both have some pride they want to maintain.

We will be back next week where we’ll finish off the main points for market viability, so stay tuned for more content. Big thanks to Zambumon for taking his time to give us some perspective into viability for keyset designs, you can find more info about Zambumon here.

This is a post in a long series of articles that will dive into what’s involved in running a group buy, and what to expect through all stages.

I think the very first step to producing a keyboard is to figure out exactly what you want, and whether or not the idea is viable for production and distribution to the “mass market”.

Let’s begin with figuring out what you want.

In the case of producing a one-off, this should be the only step that matters – kind of, we’ll get to other considerations later…

First figure out a form factor you’re aiming for, it could be TKL, FRL, 60%, Hyper-7, anything you can think of – but consider that changing the layout down the line will be costly and annoying.

Now that you’ve got a form factor in mind, will you base it off an existing PCB? If you’re doing a TKL, it makes a lot of sense to support A87 or B87 PCBs to facilitate compatibility down the line, same with readily available 60% PCBs. If your layout is too unique, you’ll need to consider the associated costs of designing and producing a viable PCB. In general though, it is always recommended to use existing available PCB formats – it makes your life far easier down the line if people want replacement PCBs and you are no longer in the hobby, or preoccupied with real life stuff.

The downside to existing PCB formats is usually the preset location for the usb connector, though this is easily mitigated by using a daughterboard – open source designs for a daughterboard are available here:
https://github.com/ai03-2725/Unified-Daughterboard
A daughterboard allows you to use quite a few off-the-shelf PCBs with minor adjustments (or none at all if the pcb already supports a JST header to feed a daughterboard).

If your design is too unique to use an existing PCB, keep in mind the various costs associated with getting one made:

• Designer costs (or time sunk into learning PCB design)
• Prototyping costs + assembly
• Testing and firmware coding
• Actual production and shipping

The average sunk cost into a PCB design and prototype (not including any designer fees) can range from $50 – $150+. So it’s important to consider this up front cost before proceeding.

Next up would be deciding on mounting method and case materials. Will this keyboard be a simple top-mounted design? Are any gaskets involved (and do you have a reliable source for acquiring them)? Do you plan on using a particular metal for the case? Some steels are harder to machine sharper angles on for example, while softer materials may lead to a more consistent anodization/finishing, at the cost of being more easy to dent or scratch.

Will your design have a weight? Or multiple? Adding more parts or complexity can quickly add up in machining costs. (We will cover this during the case design chapter later). But it is best to decide on all of this before going to a designer – or before starting design yourself.

This should cover the bare minimum requirements for where you want to go with the design. The next step would be to reach out to a designer – unless you plan on running a group buy for this keyboard. In which case we need to consider feasibility; designs and ideas that would be hard or impossible to machine, reliably finish, and use are likely bad ideas. Here’s some examples of things that aren’t really feasible:
-Decent Bluetooth (current PCB designs have very poor battery life)
-90 degree angles (these are near impossible to anodize properly, and are very brittle)
-Very complex multi-part designs (this would place the price point far too high for most buyers)

Now on to the meat of this topic – Is this something I can sell?

There are a lot of factors at play here, things like existing keycap compatibility, size and weight, competing designs running in parallel, target price point, geographic location and ongoing politics/current events, a defined target audience, and more.

We’ll kick it off with a silly example, the illuminati iS0. On paper this seems like a terrible idea right?

The idea started relatively simple, pwner shared a silly 1 key iso macropad as a joke – but this joke got me thinking, what if something like this was actually viable? What if I set out on making the highest quality 1 key macropad possible, with a top mount polycarbonate plate and a custom usb C pcb?

I first took a look at the top selling GMK sets for the previous 2 years, and saw that there were easily 5k+ sets out in the wild being used by people who had no intention of using their iso enter keys. Alright, so the use case for the caps was fulfilled, but what about cost? Making something with a finishing on par with other high end makers wouldn’t be cheap, or easy. How many units would I need to produce in order to get the price down to something at least moderately comprehensible (this ended up being $69 per unit and 150 units).

I then took a look at the total amount of buyers that had purchased previous higher end macropads, being the Rama M6 and the SingaKBD Ocelot – these had a few hundred units between them in sales – but were far more useful in real-world applications than a simple 1-key macropad. At this point I gambled on the hope that there were at least 150 people interested in something like this, with the funds to be able to actually purchase it. (Though less of a complete gamble, as I ran through all of the recent higher end keyboard buys, and concluded there were easily thousands of people with the financial means to go out and buy a $69 single-key pad).

All in all, it ended up selling very successfully considering the price point and practicality of the units. But if for example, the unit took an ANSI enter, the amount of people with unused ANSI enters would have been far lower. If I had not marketed it as such a total overkill meme-pad, it would not have sold as well, and very importantly, if this was my very first keyboard for sale, I would not have gotten as many orders.

What does this mean for you?

Well, an initially silly idea might have a market. But the opposite is also true – a very usable keyboard with very little risks taken can do poorly…

I asked Ai03 what his top 3 factors for determining if a keyboard is a good idea or not:

1. I like the design enough to want one
2. The design is universally functional and agreeable to a certain level
3. It’s possible to manufacture

He then had this to add:

I honestly don’t consider whether or not it’s mass market at all. If it sells volume, it does…. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t

Ai03

The three points above are a good starting point for determining viability for an idea. If you don’t see yourself being able to use your own keyboard, then something is clearly wrong and you don’t even consider your keyboard idea worthwhile. It goes without saying that you should love your idea.

The next point covers what others think of the design, see if others also think the idea isn’t totally nonsensical. As long as a good percentage of others think the idea has some merit, its worth a try at the very least.

The last point shouldn’t need to be explained, it makes sense on it’s own, don’t try to machine hypercubes!

We’ll call it here for this week’s post – Next week we will discuss size and weight, competing designs, politics and current events, and defining a target audience. I will also have an in depth interview with someone special, where we cover more general thoughts about idea viability in the current keyboard market

This is the first in a long series of articles that will dive into what’s involved in running a group buy, and what to expect through all stages.
Although this series is meant for group buy runners, a good first step would be to better inform prospective group buy customers, so they know what happens behind the curtains of a group buy.

Here I’ll also cover the sort of questions that group buy runners will typically not answer (for fear of misunderstanding).

We can start with one of those questions right off the bat.

“How much does this keyboard actually cost to produce”

It seems like a simple question at first, the cost of the metal machining and pcb should logically be about the price of the board’s group buy price right?

Wrong.
In the majority of cases, the bare cost of machining the board only accounts for 25-30% of the actual cost for the GB runner. What’s the other 70% then? Here’s some examples of other costs:

• Prototyping costs
• Fees: (Payment processing, web store, taxes, bank, currency conversion, shipping, etc)
• Failed units at factory
• Re-anodization (this can be done up to 10 times if aiming for a perfect color match)
• Designer cost for case and pcb (either fixed fees or a percentage)
• In the case of self-designed keyboards, valuation of time
• Shipping to GB runner from manu
• Screws, boxes, tape, foam and other small items
• Potentially failed qc units that have to be sent back and forth (this gets expensive)
• Potentially failed gb units that are not fit for sale
• Potentially lost or damaged shipments
• Potential disasters!

This covers just a few things a GB runner has to spend time and money on. In the end you are paying for the level of quality defined by the GB runner, as well as all of the time spent working on a keyboard design.

Bauer took a year from first sketches to GB
And I didn’t even do the PCB

Dixie of Dixiemech

In this above case, even if his time was valued at 1/4th of minimum wage, Dixie would be losing massive amounts of money producing his keyboard.

It is fairly normal for a group buy runner (experienced or not) to lose quite a bit of money (not just time) on their buy. This can be caused by disastrous production qualities from factories that then must be fixed or replaced entirely.

An important point to keep in mind as a buyer: you are giving a fixed amount of money to the GB runner to take a volatile amount of risk. Often everything ends up ok and the GB runner is rewarded for their risk. However, this is not always the case…

Another thing to keep in mind, that in order to be able to fulfil and check every keyboard – complexity needs to be kept down. Although you might want some fancy layout support for the keyboard you see at IC, it might not be economically or logistically possible for the GB runner to be able to support it. In this case, buyers are suggested to get their own plates or pcbs for example.

Remember, as a buyer, you are paying for the level of quality the GB runner has set. If you look at more expensive keyboards like TGR or Keycult, although the price is higher than most are comfortable paying – the level of quality and support you can expect will be far greater than a first-time uninformed GB runner, or some lower cost Asian GB runners.

Let’s hop on to the next big question:
Why are keyboards getting more and more expensive? I feel as if I am being priced out of my own hobby!

Indeed most keyboards on the market have gotten more expensive than they were 3-5 years ago. But this can be explained fairly simply – quality has come a long way.

Case materials have changed to use more expensive and consistent mixes of aluminum, as lower quality raw materials lead to poor anodization and machining capability.
Case designs have gotten far more complex, and this requires testing and prototyping (OTD, as coveted as they are, were of a simple design, with a simple mount, with a very simple PCB) While now we have gasket, multi piece designs with daughterboard pcbs and support for RGB and hotswap and various plate layouts in various materials.
And most importantly, finishing is being treated with far more care than ever before, color choices and matching have never been so diverse – and customers have never been more picky

Man I am haunted by bad ano

Yuktsi of TGR

Getting perfect anodization takes many, many tries – and shipping boards back and forth is pricey. GB runners do this all in the goal of getting the best possible finishing they can. And often, that can account for a large portion of the price of the keyboard.

Finally, let me finish up by covering a very silly question
“But the aluminum only costs $30”

If you’ve gotten this far into this post, you know that it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I will cover it anyways. That’s the equivalent of saying “A Ferrari only has $8000 of materials in it” Which sounds equally silly.

Producing a keyboard is a great deal of work, and in the majority of cases, these GB runners go out of their way, sacrificing time, money, and health to make sure you get a keyboard you’ll love.

I think its important to keep that in mind – though if you want to try it yourself, stay tuned for the rest of the posts which will cover how to design and produce your own keyboard.

See you next week!

This is the first bit of a long series I would like to talk about over the next few months

I think it would be pretty enlightening for the community to get an idea of all of the requirements needed for running a group buy or designing your own keyboard.
Before we start, let me first say that I am not a designer, nor an engineer capable of making pcbs or their associated firmware. This will cover the more practical group buy requirements. There are however plenty of resources available for you to learn pcb and case design. If enough interest exists for learning more about this kind of stuff, I wouldn’t mind bringing in someone more experienced to share some tips and tricks at a later time.

Here’s something to get you started with case design:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P0zfLLblOw

And for pcb design:
https://wiki.ai03.me/books/pcb-design/chapter/pcb-designer-guide

Of course there are lots of utilities for design, this is simply meant to be a rough start for someone new to the creation side of the hobby…

So, on to the brunt of it, over the coming months I will cover the following major important phases, and anything that comes up in between:

• What to know as a GB buyer
• Market research (understanding what you want, and if it will sell) | Part 1.5 | Part 2
• Basic case design (outsourced) – this will also apply for making a one-off keyboard
• Compatibility considerations (for layouts, pcbs, and regions)
• PCB design (Also outsourced, and may be useful for one-offs)
• Choosing a manufacturer (both case and pcb)
• Defining expectations and building relationships with your manufacturer
• Understanding MOQs and setting target pricing
• Prototyping and testing
• Allocating budgets for logistics, mistakes, and the unknown
• Interest checking and community feedback
• Refinement of design for production
• Setting your timeline (and what to expect)
• Preparing for Group Buy – Choosing to self fulfill or use proxies
• Preparing for Group Buy – Your storefront and Collecting Payment
• Launching your Group Buy – How to expand visibility without spamming
• Setting up and maintaining communication with your buyers
• The logistics of manufacturing delivery
• Quality Control – Defining your quality standard
• Anodization – The struggle
• Quality Control – How to handle failures
• Quality Control – Disaster recovery and customer communication
• Quality Control – B, C stock and scrap
• Logistics – Packaging choices and staying eco friendly
• Logistics – What to include
• Logistics – Dealing with losses and damage
• Support – Supporting your buyers
• Support – Long term support resources
• Summary of the GB running experience

More chapters may be added, if you see anything missing here that you would like covered, feel free to drop into our discord and ping me https://discord.gg/jyFVCaA

I will do my best to put out one post a week, unless the post requires some more time due to collaboration or research