Interest CheckKeycaps

GMK CYL Highlight (Hi Licht) | Colours down to 5, novelty kit draft

by Bobatype

geekhackcherry-profiledoubleshot

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byBobatype

Description

GMK CYL Highlight
(aka Hi-Licht/ ?HándarLicht (apologies I'm not German... Hervorheben doesn't roll of the tongue well XD)

Keycaps brighter than your future. This is a highlighter-themed keycap set — because nothing says 'I'm a serious typist' like a keyboard that looks like it was attacked by a pack of overly enthusiastic office interns.
Now your keyboard AND your notes can both scream for attention!

Like any good student, I have copied someone else's homework (Hi! Viz, Flare, Handarbeit, Windbreaker) and have done some changes so it looks like my own.

Kits
Base Kit

v8

Older versions:

It took more effort to photoshop the kit render in GMK Flare than I thought, and honestly I would've saved more time mocking it up myself in Blender, so I could crank out some keyboard renders via KRK afterwards. Lesson learnt...
v2 (WIP):

I have not done any other kit renders yet because I need some time for my eyes to recover...

Novelty Kit
- Render pending -

EDIT:

Doodles including the iconic cool S everyone drew as kids, Post-It note. There's also a stylised "Hi" as reference to the original Handerbeit

Old renders with the cool S and post-it note novelty

Add-Ons Kit
- Render pending - diagram placeholder in the meantime

Primarily a spacebar kit, it also includes windowed keys with legends that I believe are more suitable for more people in that cluster above the nav keys.

Relegendable Kit?
- Render pending -

This is super tentative, as I'm not sure it'd reach MOQ, but it could cover for the whole F-row, or XT/macro columns too, although they're only R1 profile.

IC Form Feedback
Kindly please let us know which kits you like in the following Google Form

Renders

Paragon by Artemis Design

D-60 Lite by KBDFans

8XMK2 by KBDFans

Phoenix by Cable Car Designs

M60-A by RAMA

Rotor by PopSmoke

Cypher by Cable Car Designs

Kindly note that the following renders are no longer up to date with the most recent base kit colour pattern change reducing the number of colours from 7 down to 5. The garish spirit remains so I've kept these old renders up whilst I wait for some new ones.

D-60 Lite by KBDFans

Isometria by ebastler

Gentleman65 by JKeys

OGR by AlchemistKeyboard

U80-A by RAMA

v4n by trashman

Topic Sentence

I've always wanted to do a fluorescent keycap set, and after seeing GMK Hi! Viz, I finally realised it was possible, so wanted to do it in different fluorescent colour.
However I was struck with indecisiveness... I couldn't pick between pink, orange and green.... Like many others, I agonised over my favorite highlighter colour for ages.

Then I thought, why just pick one colour?
And... how can we make other people's eyes hurt harder?

So I was inspired by one of the most eccentric and controversial keycap sets ever that I love to hate... GMK Handarbeit (based on the G81-3000HBD OG Handarbeit).
As someone once commented in the original interest check: "Extremely repulsive set, yet I cant take my eyes off it."
I wish to emulate that energy here. How do I make people wish they were colourblind? How do I replicate that RGB-lit keyboard energy without RGB?
How can I justify wearing sunglasses indoors yet still look like a douchebag?

Colours:

These were the initial reference colours, but they're likely to change to achieve higher fluorescence where necessary. There are some good RAL alternatives that I'm considering instead. It is highly likely I may borrow the yellow from Hi! Viz and reddish orange from Glare.

Arguments

Note, I did take some liberties with copying the Handarbeit pattern so forgive me that it's not an authentic adaptation, but here's my justifications:
- Orange serves as the primary alpha colours instead of red, because orange is a more common highlighter colour
- R1 Esc is Red-Orange to mirror the F13, because it looks better
- I did not include 'Purple' as I couldn't find a good fluorescent reference. I feel that purple simply can't match the vividness of the magenta/pink which are much more common highlighter colours too.

Rebuttals

None. It's perfect. Who doesn't like neon vomit? It's like having construction worker hazard clothing in your face 24/7

Deskmat
Exercise Book

Rough draft ->

Fun fact: My original concept for this set was called 'Highlighter' (consider it a highlighter version of GMK Redacted), however it did not seem feasible to achieve the effect with double-shot/UV-print, and I wasn't ready to commit to dyesub unless I had prototypes made.

Pricing
Base Kit: TBA
Add-On Kit: TBA
NORDEUK Kit: TBA

GB Date
TBA

Vendors

US - Novelkeys
CA - TBA
EU - Oblotzky
UK - Prototypist
CN - TBA
SG - TBA
KR - TBA
OCE - TBA

Collaborations

Feel free to reach out to me through discord: bobatype
Current confirmed collabs:

Special Thanks
MVKB for GMK Hi Viz that exposed me to the feasibility of highly fluorescent colourway.
Kiririn for GMK Flare which pushed me to push this idea out prematurely (and whose IC and kit render I copied). Might as well thank Markymark too for pushing Kiririn to actually bring Flare into IC which brought this into IC.
Cocobrais (and Cherry) for the original GMK Handarbeit inspiration.

If you like the set, please consider filling out the IC Form and leave any feedback you may have![/s]

IC Feedback Form link

Discord Server

Despite only a small number of people in my server, I'm already annoyed by all the spambots, so for now I'm not going to promote more activity in there until this project is closer to GB stage.

Reviews

"Finally, a way to make your keyboard look like a rave flyer from 2003." - anon

"Just what my eyeballs needed — fluorescent neon regret in keycap form" - Lightsimon

"A sight for soothed eyes" - Confusious

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