Designing doubleshot key caps

[Wihl]

I'm in the middle of organizing a group buy for a Team Liquid key cap right now. But I want to be 100% sure that the design is completely compatible before I go ahead and start ordering anything. This is the current design I have:


I'm a bit worried about the points that the arrow is poiting at. are those too narrow?

What about spacing around the design? Should the arboard edge be touching the last pixel of the design? Should there be some space?

[aggiejy]

Assuming you're talking about Signature Plastics:

• Artboard size for a standard key (like esc) for DCS profile is 0.356" x 0.427".  So if you're using Illustrator, you can set it to that from the start.
• Line thicknesses need to be at least 0.012"  (this meaning the infilled color... so black in your picture is likely too thin.)
• Space between the characters/lines/islands, need to be at least 0.020" (you look good here at a glance)

Of course, in a really detailed image, some things may get finer than that, but you shouldn't count on them coming out very clean.

[Wihl]

Yes, this is for SP.

I guess what I'm confused about is this: lets say you have a circle that is 0.012" across and a triangle that is 0.012" between each point. Will the circle come out ok while the points of the triangle will look really bad?

[Wihl]

The yellow Starcraft doubleshot looks pretty "pointy" as well in a very similar way to the horses neck but that seems to have come out ok... Am I missing something?

[aggiejy]

I'm not looking at it in Illustrator with the ruler, but I think what you have will come out pretty good.  The ends of those two points may not be as perfect and sharp as your drawing at this size, but it'll likely look fine at such a small scale.  I think they'll let you know if it won't work.  But be sure to mention it to make sure they're watching out for the concern.  (They're not perfect as you can see from Group Buy 3... but not bad considering their technique.)

[Wihl]

What usually happens when a line is thin but not super-thin like in the design in the OP? Will the line simply "float out" (like pouring paint on a piece of paper) to fill the minimum width or is it more of a coin toss with random artifacts?

Where is the number one keyboard expert on the planet when you need him?