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GMK Houhai 后海 - LIVE AUGUST 1

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Description

GMK Houhai 后海

A sense memory of misspent Beijing nights

Coming August 1 from vendors around the world

In the heart of Beijing, tucked behind the Forbidden City thronged with tourists, and the party compound heavily guarded, there is a small lake. At night this lake comes alive with neon lights piercing the city haze, advertising every pleasure under heaven, plied by pedal boats in the summer and speed skaters in the winter, redolent with the sights, sounds, and smells of the city. They call it Houhai (pron. HOH-high): 后海. In this place, a photo negative of Pleasure Island, the ancient, the modern, and the futuristic live side by side.

GMK Houhai is an ancient-futurist keycap set design inspired by the sights of the Chinese capital at night, and will be the first GMK set produced with full Chinese character legends. Rendered in custom RAL colors, GMK Houhai (pron. HOH-high) evokes the Beijing night sky in a warm, hazy grey, with alpha legends in the fluorescent red of the Chinese city sidewalk reflecting neons after a rain, and modifiers in shades of cobalt, aqua, jade, gold, and clean white that can be found in both the ornate woodwork of historic sites and in the kaleidoscope of city lights.

The GMK Houhai set legends are based around the Cangjie (仓颉) typing system, first among many methods of typing in Chinese using Chinese characters. The set is fully functional for Cangjie typists, as well as Pinyin and Latin character users.

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See a full gallery of board renders

Follow me on IG @fort_stevens for photos and project updates, and feel free to reach out on Discord at grundlemere#1126 with questions or to say hello.

Vendors

US: Cannonkeys
China: Zfrontier
SE Asia: iLumkb
Europe: CandyKeys
Australia: Daily Clack
Canada: Deskhero.ca
UK (non-EU): Prototypist.net

What's changed?

Renders have been updated to more closely depict physical colors
Set colors have been updated to include more well-matched GMK stock colors and fewer custom colors
Number of colors in base kit have been reduced by 1 (dark purple/blue accent color now appears only in novelties)
Novelties have been updated to match GMK specs, and icons have been thickened and improved
Kitting has been updated to match GMK Shanshui kitting - No English or icon mods this time around, though it's possible for a future run
Novelty icons have been modified or swapped out to reflect a theme more specifically Beijing and less generally Chinese
Deskmats have been updated to reflect new icons
Kit branding has been refreshed

Tell me about the kits!

In the base kit, Latin legends and Cangjie Chinese sublegends, while the num row displays Chinese numeral sublegends, all rendered in brilliant fluorescent red on hazy dark grey. The numpad features complex financial characters used on money and in transaction records to prevent forgery. Simplified Chinese (as used in Beijing) and Traditional Chinese (used in overseas territories and increasingly popular on the mainland) base kits are availale. Perhaps most eye-catching, the other kits offered include clean Cangjie monolegend alphas + Chinese character arrow sets to complete the look, and a novelty kit I hope will knock your socks off. Novelties are rendered in seven kit colors, with the famous sights, legendary bites, urban transit highlights of the Chinese capital...plus a ghost story.

燕京 Yànjīng (Capital of Swallows) SC base kit

琉璃廠 Liúlíchăng (Culture Street) TC base kit

小吃 Xiăochī (Little Snacks) novelties kit

(Icon art is a collaborative work with my sibling, Maho, an artist and musician who lives down the street from me here in Washington, D.C., and a few modified stock icons we loved purchased from artists on thenounproject. Maho has done plenty of album cover and poster art in the music world, and now brings her talents doing art for the mechanical keyboard community. She expects to release new deskmat and banderole art soon.)

笔顺 Bĭshùn (Stroke Order) Cangjie Monolegend Alphas Kit

太空人 Tàikōngrén (Taikonaut) Spacebars Kit

See a full gallery of kit renders

Collaborations

Luxe Cables for a custom aviator cable
Salvun
RAMA WORKS
Destroyer Caps
Landcaps
Mastonon Caps
Lo-Ki Caps
rtg caps
Frumpzkeys
Bhomasx Caps
Sway Caps
Hungry Hustlas
Zero Keycaps
A.X Studios
Froueloop
Fraktal Kaps
Rejecks Caps
Faded Caps
ILumKB for apparel
More to come!

Acknowledgments

NathanAlphaMan for the incredible collaborative partnership, the gorgeous renders, and the critical design feedback early in the process
Exclusive for the the cultural translation help and the permission to use his beautiful e8.5 in our renders (can't wait for mine!)
My sibling, Maho, for putting up with my management style and still turning out such great work and taking my calls
The MK Community for supporting GMK Shanshui 山水 and helping me make this set a reality
Phatty, MoesToaster,Alex, Louis, and Jerrolds for their immediate passion for this project and being the best hypemen
Nero and the Matrix Labs team for talking me out of a bad decision
Digital Carpentryfor being my first partner and my biggest sounding board through all of this
energieschleuder for convincing me this could really happen
The people of Beijing for opening my eyes to what is possible

Thanks for reading this far and thank you for your feedback.

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