[This article was published on 19/0 by the author of the Little Black Box @Inklaw and may not be reproduced without permission!] 】

In recent years, the peripheral culture has become an indispensable part of the gamer circle, and the keyboard, as one of the most important input devices, has played a role in customization

As the absolute C position of the keyboard appearance, the keycaps have a huge industrial chain support, and the price of various keycaps can be very low

Thin Green Town Building

I couldn't find the keycap of the Ark of Tomorrow character "Thin Green" that I wanted

Or maybe you want to personalize the content of your keycaps and surprise your friends

Let's take a look at how to customize, this article allows you to make your own keycaps at a lower cost

Requires some knowledge of Adobe illustrator

The author of the pattern is Xia Hunt p station ID is 2572275,

This article is non-commercial and the files are not shared

This article will cover:

Start with design

to find a factory to produce

to get the real thing

The whole process

The first step in creating your keycaps is to create a keycap template that belongs to your keyboard according to the layout of your keyboard

We need to use a site called

Keycaster

In this website, you can generate SVG files according to your keyboard layout, which is convenient for you to draw in AI

• In the first step of your creation, it is recommended to generate a keyboard with a 104 array

↑ Click 104-ANSI

You can see the generated interface

• You can select one of the buttons or press Ctrl to select more

• Use the up, down, left, right, and arrow keys to fine-tune the position

• In keycap settings you can fine-tune the settings of a single or multiple keycaps

• The width and height units are 25.0 per level

• xy is the relative position of the keycaps on the keyboard

Example of adjusting the position↓

The character part can be skipped without processing

Because the site can't export svg files with characters, let's edit them further in AI

• Once you have learned how to set the size and position of the keycaps, you can make the corresponding template according to the keyboard you need to work on

My mold is vgn v2 prov0 for example

I forgot to move the space to the left by 25.0 blocks here

ps：如果你也和我一樣是98配列，下圖示紫的三個功能鍵在很多常規104成品鍵帽里，都不是這種98配列的1U大小，提交訂單的時候注意1U小鍵總數是不是超標

Thanks for adding in the comment section

The next step is to color the keycaps that you need to change the color of

• It's still a single selection or press Ctrl to multi-select, and the color is graded in the menu below

The following is an example↓

• When you're done adjusting the colors, check if there's any problem with the template

• After confirmation, click Download and export as SVG

Next, turn on the AI, it's this AI, it's not that kind of AI

You can see this interface after importing

After the svg is exported, it is text-free, and it has to be added manually

• Click on the "T" on the left toolbar to launch the text tool

• Enter the corresponding character at the corresponding keycap

• Adjust the position of the character on the keycap

• Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Shift+V paste in place and drag to the right, then you can see the layout guide line come out, and then continue to copy and paste in place
• If you want to do a side engraving effect, enter text in the gray area below the keycaps

• After aligning the guides, the text in this row is on the same horizontal line, that is, the upper and lower positions are unified

Note that this part needs to be fine-tuned left and right according to your font, because there are some fonts that have a non-standard glyph structure and width, so please manually adjust it to a position that you feel is visually balanced

• On the right side of the workspace, you can open Properties to modify various properties of your word, including fonts

• You can use the ruler tool to pull the guides, which can be better typesetting

Once you've added the text, it's time to add the pattern

Because the current mainstream keycap process is the five-sided sublimation process, if you want to have a pattern on all five sides, you have to contact the merchant to design, and this article only makes a single-sided pattern

• The next step is a bit more complicated, as you need to import the image into the layer on the surface and make a clipping mask

To put it mildly is to make the pattern not go beyond the top layer of the keycap

The procedure is as follows

1. Double-press the keycap you want to add a pattern to enter the isolation mode for that keycap layer
2. Double-click the top layer to enter the isolation mode of the layer, and you can see that there is only one layer left in the layer list
3. Drag in a pattern, and the pattern will be added to the innermost layer in isolation mode
4. Right-click on the pattern and move it down one level so that the keycap layer covers the pattern
5. Make sure to select the pattern and press Shift to add the layer above
6. Right-click to create a clipping mask

This makes it easy to adjust the position without having to re-crop the image with the same ratio as the keycaps each time

• Check the whole after you are done

Then the file, stored as, is exported in .ai format

Because in fact, there are many businesses that provide customized printing services based on 104 columns, if you have fewer keys, you can make additional keys

So you can backcast the keymaster, calculate 104 minus your collation, and export an additional add-on svg

Here it is recommended to make the supplementary key into a function key such as volume and screenshot

I added some extra big keys here, and since the keyboard was given to my buddy, I made him his favorite Destiny 2 skill add-on keycaps

The next step is to move on to production

Go to the relevant e-commerce platform to find a manufacturer that matches the height of your keyboard keycaps

Here to avoid the suspicion of bringing goods, skip the name of the store directly

Note, be sure to find out what keycaps your keyboard can fit before customizing

Below is a transcript of my conversation with customer service

If you can export the Ai format, you can export the Ai format

The next step is to wait for the goods and installation

The keycaps produced by each factory may have a slight color difference, which is an inevitable problem in the printing industry.

When I arrived, the dark gray keycaps were a little more magenta

But considering that this store custom prints 90 five-sided sublimation keycaps and free shipping is only in the early 0s, it is not unacceptable

This is the end of the text, please take a seat in the comment area for discussion and guidance

Next comes the fragmented thoughts

I originally wanted to give my buddy a birthday gift at the beginning of last year, after all, they are people who have been playing together for fifteen or six years, because he is a writer, responsible for coordinating and writing game copywriting in our studio, he originally used my Logitech tea switch, I thought about it and wanted to give him the whole typing comfort on his birthday, relatively weak keyboard, so I bought the blueberry ice cream switch vgn v2 pro v0, when I chose the keycaps for him, I didn't find the keycaps about this character, so I had this experience, A week before his birthday, the design was completed, the production was submitted, and the final packaging, and now I almost forgot about it when I wrote this article, if there are any mistakes, please point them out

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