[IC] KAT Refined - GB starts tomorrow!

[MacSurfy]

Welcome to GMK KAT Refined
www.kat-refined.com

TX66 by TX Keyboard Inc




Pricing








Updates

6/1/2020
Launched IC

06/01/2020 - 08/01/2020
Removed all the old updates to keep the list clean

08/01/2020
Discord — Discord channel added on Mykeyboard.eu server over at https://discord.gg/GyDWwE2

09/01/2020
— General: Site is up and running! www.kat-refined.com


09/09/2020
— Renders: Added another Iron180 render with full WoB
— Renders: Updated all renders with the new legend/icon tweaks.
— General: Improved on a whole bunch of glyphs and their positions.
— General: Tweaked arrow, tail and legend on ISO enter and numpad enter.
— General: Added cap sizes in Kit renders.
— General: Added pricing.





Todo


— Wait for new samples.
— Ready for GB!






The theme? There is none.

Instead of grabbing colors from a random anime character, or taking inspiration from my kids breakfast cereal leftovers this set came from a deeper need that I have felt growing for quite some time.

If you know me, I have always favoured GMK sets before anything else. It’s what I always bought and it was the only type of keyset render commissions I would accept. There’s something about the look of the icons/legends that just sit right with me.

You’ll often hear people say GMK’s keycaps are the most premium out there. Which I tend to agree with. Sound is great and they look great but you will find many typographical/print errors. Not something I would expect on a premium product, but like most of you I am sort of used to them.






So what is it then?

I’ve been curious about the KAT profile ever since it was released. Heard good things about the typing experience and sound but I could just never get past the legends. As with most sculpted profiles the legends are really big, centered and seem less thought out than GMK/Cherry.

That being said, I get that some people love them. And that’s cool, I don’t want to step on designers toes but I am just not into that look at all. I thought that perhaps there are more people like me out there, who are annoyed with GMK icons/legends but can’t find a good alternative. Or people who are willing to try a more sculpted profile but just can’t see themselves using centered legends/icons.

This one is for you.






Renders


Kotai by Stewiedk97


TX66 by TX Keyboard Inc


Iron180 by Smith + Rune


Iron180 by Smith + Rune


Iron180 by Smith + Rune


Lodestone by Jae & Flex, FLX x Proto[Typist]


Iron165 by Smith + Rune


Iron165 by Smith + Rune


Candybar by TKC






Kits—BoW

More

Kits—WoB

More

Colors




Alphas and sublegends (Numrow numbers, Code and @ for instance) bleed a little bit too much for my liking. They have been adjusted and will receive the updated versions in the next batch. ETA uknown. Arrows came out looking really sharp (not talking about the rounded corners), a big improvement from GMK as you can see.

The white is pretty close to WS1 which I am happy with. KAT Milkshake is using the same white. I have ordered samples of another white just to see if I like that one more but for now I would say this is the one we are going with. WS2 is too pale/blue to go with e-white boards so I think that choice is not optimal. Black samples have also been ordered.







Vendors


— EU: Mykeyboard.eu
— US: TX Keyboards
— Canada: Deskhero.ca
— Asia: zFrontier
— Oceania: Daily Clack
— Ukraine\Russia\Belarus: Funkeys
— SEA:HEXKeyboards






Credits

— Mykeyboard.eu: For jumping on this project with no hesitation and having the best keyboard related store with great service. Europe is lucky to have you!
— Emir: For being a day-one supporter and helping me with the kits and innovating the GMK game
— Koen: For showing support and being an all around great guy!
— Jae: For looking over the kits and being such a great ambassador for the community
— Kwerdenker: For taking keyboard photos like it ain't no thing. Also for looking over my kits. Much love!
— Konstantin: For all the help with the kits in my set, but also others.






Show support

Add this to your signature

[/list]

Code: [Select]

[url=https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=106725.0][img]https://i.imgur.com/m0PHzjC.jpg[/img][/url]

[MacSurfy]

General tweaks

I am posting some of the more general issues with legends here in a second post so it doesn't clog the initial IC-post with information that you might not care about. But if you do, then feel free to read up on some of the work that went in to this. Please note that I have not spent a great deal of time setting up my photos so there will be lens distortion, rotation and other issues. It's good enough to make my point though. Some issues with GMK legends will vary from set to set also.





The font



Let’s start with the font. Since KAT is using dyesub we have a lot more freedom when looking for a replacement font. Instead of the rounded font that is harder to read, has less features and does not scale well - I want to go with something that is clear and legible at any size, has clear and distinguished characteristics yet seeming somewhat neutral in the overall appearance.

Crossbar’s should be thick enough to support small sizes. Ascenders/descender height is of importance too while I want a terminal on the T’s unlike GMK/Cherry for legibility reasons. Clarity across sizes is basically what I am looking for.






Gutters



One of my biggest pet peeves with GMK legends is how size and letter spacing does not really support a 1U cap. To battle this they’ve chosen to decrease the gutters drastically which makes it look very inconsistent. Especially noticeable when placed on bottom row next to a wider modifier key that uses the regular gutter space.

More

Kerning & spacing



Kerning and letter spacing throughout all the legends goes from OK to horrible.
And sometimes both since the same legends can look different depending on the key.

P g Dn or Pg   Dn .. which one is it?






Height alignment



Punctuations, symbols and other characters. Should they use a single size/stroke throughout or be independently scaled?

I think the answer is somewhere in between. The relation between symbols on different keys is less important than making the symbols understandable and clear. But one has to take the other symbols in to account to make the visual appearance somewhat balanced and correct when seeing them all at the same time. So in other words, the exclamation mark should not be tiny compared to the tilde etc.

Where I think you have less freedom is where in the single cap grid you place the symbol. The backtick symbol for instance which you can see under tilde should never be placed on the baseline. It will look too much like a comma. There are many cases like this …

* I edited the visual so you can easily see baseline/cap height.






U feeling down Tab?



I hope nobody has missed how misaligned the TAB icon is on the Tab 1.5U key, the most common Tab cap. For some reason it seems to be aligned correctly on the other keys. I never quite understood why the numpad + symbol is so massive either, so I took the liberty of fixing it.






Enter



The enter keys are pretty interesting. I’ve tried to find reasons for the way they look but I have come up short.

If we start with ISO Enter the sublegend is above the icon which is inconsistent by itself but it also gives it a strange balance. The weight is at the bottom where the arrow and horizontal line is, and therefore it would work better to use the legend below the arrow.

The alignment with text and arrow is on the left, which is consistent with everything else that has a legend but the ISO enter key is unlike any other key so in this case I would like to not be consistent for the sake of being consistent. Balance feels really off with that odd ISO enter shape and the dead space around it. But yeah, preferences …






Stroke weights



Stroke sizes are varying a lot between the same type of legend which works fine if it is balanced properly. I find that in many cases it is not. And again like earlier the symbols are way too close to the edge for no apparent reason.

[Abec13]

So now, what kinda white is this? As I've learned from buying many sets, black can be black, but white seems to have many forms.

[FunBox]

This is gorgeous, exactly what I needed to make me purchase a set. Any eta?

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk

[eskimojo]

Love the idea - will have a better look at how I feel about the kitting at a later date.

You've always had an eye for detail, so I'm sure this set is in good hands

[Ulliam]

I'm in. you had me at the 00's apple reference, but damn dude. Making us all look bad out here.

[Capsy]

Oh boi. Amazing work macsurfy

[Bl4ck]

For sure in for both colorways, but would love support for ISO-PT.

Would also love icon bottom-row/esc but, thats set in stone. Love it anyway

[belgium_waffles]

Please consider Daily Clack as OCE vendor!

[ackzot]

beautiful. definitely would pick up a black and white. a little surprised by the hhkb set. even though kat moqs are different, more kits are still a logistical sorting issue and the hhkb one feels a little superfluous. and i use an hhkb layout at times, but without the stepped caps since I prefer a regular ctrl there.

[Fredington]

You're missing 1.75u Control for HHKB

[L-Ron]

Seconding the request for Daily Clack as the OCE vendor. This set looks amazing, would love to get my hands on it.

[yui_]

do you want to elaborate on why you chose to have an hhkb kit rather than a "tsangan 60%" kit?
at bare minimum, 2 more keys (2x 1.5u ctrl) would give you a 7u bottom row.
1 additional key (2.75u shift) would give you full right shift support.
2 additional keys (2u backspace and 1.5u pipe) would give full backspace support.
potentially, a fulltouch caps lock would round off all "needed" compatibility for a 7u 60% kit.

all in all, that is 6 additional keys which would make the kit much more desirable to a much wider range of people. so, the question stands - any reason you chose to make the kit hhkb only?

just my 2 cents, glwic

[Rafa_n]

Dedicated HHKB kit is a dream come true for me lol. I would just change the stepped caps lock to a non stepped control.

I'm 100% buying this.

[ubmit]

this is looking amazing!

[eniigma]

Looks great! Glwic 

[Mojo3354]

You had me at the 40s kit with a 1.25u Enter.

In for at least 1 BoW and WoB.

[rewke]

I’m in as well! Can’t wait for GB.

[NoPunIn10Did]

It appears you are missing kits for Ergodox.  I'd be happy to help you sort those out.

The guide I've written is a good starting point:
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=105714.0

[gaynut]

i really like this! always preferred gmk style legends

i know you have reasonings for your decisions, but i've got a couple random thoughts about the aesthetics off the top of my head:
1. the gutters look a little too small? i agree gmk gutters are really inconsistent (oblivion git rip) but it looks strange being that close to the edge
2. some of the numrow symbols look really large, like the %
3. im not sold on the font. it looks a little too plain? maybe it's just renders, where everything looks sharp, or i'm just used to the ibm style font when talking about less rounded legends.

[Serket]

Literally ressurected this account after years of lurking to say...

About damn time, bravo. Every single time I see a KAT or SA profile I've always pondered the appeal of the go-to font and centred legends.

Thought it was just me. Apparently not.

God speed with the IC and subsequent GB.

[Sigil]

This looks pretty good, agree with a lot of your points about GMK legend inconsistency. I'd definitely be in for a few kits. The stepped caps lock in the HHKB kit seems like an odd choice though. Home row control is one of HHKB layout's big things, and using a stepped control has always felt super counterintuitive to me.

Also sad about no ergo kits, but it is what it is.

[GEIST]

After your introduction I was really curious, but in the end I'm pretty disappointed. You obviously did a good job on the refinement, but in the end it just follows the same rules every cherry set is following and apply them to KAT. The same icons, off centered legends and uninspired font.

[edctog]

I'm in! This one looks awesome!

[depletedvespene]

Quick thoughts:

- R2 \| is missing in the alphas kits (disregarding the HHKB ones); R3 #~ should be in NorDeUK instead.

- R3 1.5U \| is in the mods kits instead of the alphas kits for no apparent reason.

- Is the NorDeUk list of supported national layouts the usual band of five? (Danish, English (UK), German, Norwegian, Swedish/Finnish) And... why? This is KAT, so it should be feasible to break this up into, at the very least, NorDe and UK.

- The NorDeUk kits are missing the numpad comma (although I'd put it in the numpad kits). I'll check in detail later, but so far there seem to be no other obvious errors or omissions there.

EDIT: one more:

- The F row kits seem to be the only ones with R5 keys. If keeping with that, they need to add keys like Insert and Delete (for 75% keyboards) and move the R4 End and PgDn there (for 1800 and 1800-like layouts).

[kiwoli]

Refined indeed, glad I'm also not the only one who feels the legends on KAT could do with some work.

Would like more information on the White of the BoW set though, will this be ABS or PBT?

[NoPunIn10Did]

Refined indeed, glad I'm also not the only one who feels the legends on KAT could do with some work.

Would like more information on the White of the BoW set though, will this be ABS or PBT?

KAT is always PBT.

[LXVRGS]

ne purse caps lock avail?

[GraffitiDecos]

Yes.

Sent from my SM-G973W using Tapatalk

[tominabox1]

Suggest kitting for KAT rather than mimiking GMK kitting, espicially for 40s kits. 40s buyer would still have to buy the whole 60s+ kit to get the mods they need. There's no reason for this with KAT.

[Adelscott]

Is a french kit doable ? With classic colorway like these you would sell some (not hundreds tho). I think I would buy two full sets, especially if you put the third legend like you did in NorDe kit. This third legend is missing in all KAT sets because of centered legends.
You would make some dudes like me very happy !

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

[depletedvespene]

Is a french kit doable ? With classic colorway like these you would sell some (not hundreds tho). I think I would buy two full sets, especially if you put the third legend like you did in NorDe kit. This third legend is missing in all KAT sets because of centered legends.

As long as we're on this, KAT sets so far have avoided tertiary (and cuaternary) legends because "KAT spherical, like SA" and "non centered looks bad on SA", and this is a point that needs to be tested: will corner-aligned legends look proper in KAT keycaps or not? (followed by will the necessarily thinner lines in those glyphs look fine?)

[IOVERCALLHISTIOCYTES]

Is there a KAT black keycap in existence now that we can see? How black are we talking?

[Adelscott]

.

[KingOfMemes]

Colevrak for WoB and BoW please

[mysticworks]

I love it! Finally a KAT set with clean legends. Appreciate all the work you're putting into the kerning and such.

One question- will other, future KAT sets be able to use the legends you develop for Refined? I'd really like to see more sets on KAT and I think that these legends would push designers towards KAT as a bigger option.

Also, do agree with the prior posts on the sizing of the gutters- as it is it looks a bit too small to me.

[simpe]

Cool stuff, ill be looking out for this. Only criticism is the shortage of 1u bottom row mods. As a 40% ortho user you would have to go with |ctrl|code|code|alt| as your lefthand mods. 

[neutralstate]

really hope that future kat sets can also considering using the same fonts etc as well, the font is one the big things that keeps me from getting KAT sets.


thanks this is great work

[d4vid4f]

Really diggin this set!

[MdotMaxson]

Thank you for this. I can’t tell if I knew I knew the legends on GMK were one if not my fav thing about GMK sets but now it’s clear at least. And that’s the main reason why I can’t use like SA is the childish font. Man I love this. Thank you. I hope designers use these new legends for Kat moving forward. Because also the other thing you left out is KAT is PBT. I’m paranoid about even using my GMK sets because I’m
Not about that shine. Not only does it look hideous. It feels worse than covid 19 coughed into your throat.

[MadaMada21]

Another BoW & WoB Set, here we go again~

I'm an absolute sucker for these haha. Count me in!

[NathanAlphaMan]

The easiest must buy I've ever seen. No notes.

[SleepIsAllINeed]

Looking forward to this 

[Banzai]

I'm in for the BoW set. No questions asked.

[CaptainVinceO2]

Looks great! Super clean and love the aesthetic, interested in proxying it. Pming you in a bit ))

[krzank]

Definitely WoB. Really refined.
Any chance of adding french and/or russian (with R2 Tilde/Ё) support?
What is missing:
-- Text mods WoB: R2/1.75U "Control" for HHKB please (also Text/Icon, and probably BoW too).
-- ALL mods: R4/1U Backspace please.

[Jaxxstatic]

why is it labeled in reverse R1-4 bottom to top instead of top to bottom?

[NoPunIn10Did]

why is it labeled in reverse R1-4 bottom to top instead of top to bottom?

KAT's manufacturer numbers it that way.  You'll also see this numbering with many OEM manufacturers.

[Jaxxstatic]

why is it labeled in reverse R1-4 bottom to top instead of top to bottom?

KAT's manufacturer numbers it that way.  You'll also see this numbering with many OEM manufacturers.

Thanks.
Will just repeat the "1.75u Control for HHKB please."

[Surface]

interested! WoB alphas and BoW mods would be my preferred look