Trying to understand the custom color process and formulate it in very simple steps for anyone concerned.
I would view this as an ideal procedure:
Designer <-> Manufacturer1) Picking colorsDesigner.The designer / GB runner has physical color palettes (plastic chips) and picks colors for alphas, modifiers, legends, accents and so on. His responsibility is to make sure they look as intended under all projected lighting conditions and pick accordingly.
Output: physical color codes, for instance RAL
2) Color matching & sample productionManufacturer.The manufacturer's task is to produce the colored plastics from raw plastics (color matching) and mold them into sample keys. For this, there are exactly the same
color fans or catalogues plastic chips physically present at the manufacturer's site, as well as color metering tools.
Output: sample keys matched to the desired color codes
3) Aesthetic checkDesigner.The designer examines the results: all combinations of legend- and base colors in various light conditions. She can be sure that the samples received match the chosen colors from her plastic reference card.
Output: yes or no decision
Start over at 1) if the aesthetics are not satisfactory in the real world on actual keycaps.
Pipelining Theory:Above procedure should definitely start in the IC phase and ideally is completed before the GB phase begins, for two reasons:
- To prove producibility to
investors participants - Speed up the group buy phase by moving the color selection & matching part in the otherwise dormant IC phase. This is akin to instruction pipeling in computer processors, which has been commonplace since the late 1970s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_pipelining
It is really just a fancy term for a matter of course.
Designer <-> Group Buy ParticipantsWhat remains is to convey the physical colors from the standard catalogue (let's say RAL) to anyone interested in the group buy (who does not own the physcial color palette). The resulting renders should be seen as a preview, because they can never be 100% spot-on.
More about this aspect is detailed in this excellent piece:
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=98240.0
To conclude, it is essential that designer and manufacturer both use plastic chips as reference to remove any ambiguities.
Interested parties could also aquire those color sample chips before buying to see what they are getting, that is if the gb runner releases the codes.
Thoughts?
Edit 2020/05/27:
- Cleared up terminology
- Removed unnecessary speculations
- Added Pipelining Theory
Edit 2020/06/05:
- minor edit regarding renders