How about going with the GD PBT color (The same one used for the rest of the numpad)? If SP have this color available, maybe we can kindly request them to do a sample of the same numpad keys in black and this color?
I believe that would suffer from the same saturation problems. The darker the color the easier it apparently is to get the dye to saturate into the resin properly. I'm also not sure that it would be a good aesthetic choice, as it would mean we'd lose the tone variation between the graphical and textual elements of the numpad.
Maybe we should try to go with a darker blue and if they still have the saturation problems, then just switch to black? It would mean a further delay and we may very well still end up with black, but at least it would give us the sense that we had explored all our options? I'm personally in no rush.
I think that's the best approach! I my opinion further delay doesn't matter at this point and exploring all options is more important
I am leaning in this direction and just made this request to SP. It shouldn't take too much longer, and it at least will allow us to feel like we explored all our options. However, SP have spent a lot of time and resources on test runs and samples for us on this buy, so if they say that two more runs of testing and samples is just too costly, I'm not inclined to push back too hard and would perhaps just tend to try to work with them on getting black legends to look as good as possible (i.e., to ensure that the registration issues are solved, including possibly slightly modifying the graphics to not come quite so close to the key face.)
If a darker color means crisper legends that would be my vote
My understanding is that this is generally the case.
Could you make a quick render with black on the Numpad?
From the photos the print is not OK in blue, that is why I said that "if it's well done" .
If they can make it look crisp and on the spot in black than we go black, but there must be no mistakes, if it's black it must be perfect. And I think it will look good in black, maybe I looked too much at the original mockup and I can't imagine the numpad in other color than blue
I will definitely do a new render before we finalize the decision. I'm currently traveling in San Francisco and won't be back at my home computer until Sunday, but I should be able to make a new mock-up by early next week.
Thanks for all the input, everyone. Keep any further thoughts coming. This has been very helpful.