Firstly, OMG YES.
I am an obsessive TNG fan—have been almost all my life. I also own an original LCARS back-light Okudagram from the set with the full range of colors and am happy to share photos and to assist in screen-accurate color matching. I actually have spent much of my career thinking about the LCARS interface and how best to translate that vision and aesthetic into contemporary technology (happy to discuss, but I'll save the details for another venue). I also have a lot of experience building screen-accurate Trek prop replicas (with a particular emphasis on the 24-century era stuff like this).
At any rate, I'm willing and happy to do anything I can to help make this a reality. I also do a lot of graphic design work in the Adobe suite, have a lot of experience with color work (mostly in the Pantone color space) and color-matching, typography, etc and I would be happy to take a first crack at designing legends/graphics.
In short: let's make this happen!
My initial thoughts on the physical form factor are this:
ProfileISA and DSA are very retro, and I think something LCARS should be ultra-sleek and modern by contrast. As close to flat as possible, just like the original LCARS interface panels themselves, would seem to be more in order. In PBT, I would favor Cherry profile, or something similarly low-profile. If we went the double-shot route, I think the SP LP profile might even be the best one suited to this. We should take the opportunity to do something unusual.
MaterialThe most important thing would seem to be to use the material that will allow us the most precise color-matching. That being said, I personally prefer PBT and thick where possible, purely for their feel, sound, and durability. Double-shot ABS would be a good second choice if it offers other better aesthetic properties (such as better color matching or crisper legend graphics).
LegendsThe traditional LCARS font can be a little clunky when used in physical print. It looks great and stylish on the show when used as a small component of a busy display graphic, but the fonts used are typically heavy in font-weight yet highly condensed. This would make for very ugly single-letter caps. I would recommend trying to find a font that has better typographic properties for use in a keyboard legend set but still has a futuristic TNG-like "feel" without actually trying to be too literal in using replicas of the original font set. Something like
Tungsten by Hoefler & Frère-Jones (or a number of others I could come up with) would offer a much more professional range of font weights and flexibility in making legends but while still feeling sleek and futuristic.
Another big question is whether to do the rounded borders that are commonly present in LCARS designs (like the deviant art one linked to above). If we could figure out a way to make it work, it could be awesome. But I think just doing it for the sake of it could leave us with something looking pretty ugly; lots of blank ink bleeding to the edge of key cap tops but then the underlying color being visible between keys at the edges would just look amateurish and weird. A lot of creativity and thought would have to go into doing this properly.
Blank optionAlong similar lines, if possible, I would love to see a blank keyset option—something suggestive of the TNG era in its color scheme, but not too busy. I think people who aren't Trek fans might even find this appealing. The LCARS color scheme is, I think, inherently beautiful and has broad intrinsic appeal.
