10/28/2020 Update
It's been an exciting week for us so we'll dive straight into it.
Prototypes
Series 00 prototype Mk I production has just finished, and is currently traveling across the border and through the Pacific Ocean to Cubic, Isshin, and loop. We had our first look straight from the factory of the completed state and we are very excited to get them in person to do our first round of quality control. Once we are happy with the way they look, we will be slowly showing them first to vendors, then Insiders, and then the public through our IC v2.
Our Insiders have had their first look at them too -- thank you for being part of the esc lab community!
We've been prepping our spaces to take some sweet photography of the Series 00 to revamp our website and IC. You may been seen a sneak peek of what's to come in the #design Discord channel.
Packaging
We're still working on which style of packaging we want, but we'll be soon sending our final designs to our vendor to get samples.
Collaborations
We have a number of very exciting render collaborations to announce for Series 00's IC v2. We’re honored and humbled to be working alongside such talented designers in the MKB community.
Community Updates
We announced the esc lab Insider's Club. The top supporters of esc lab are personally invited to this club, where it's an exclusive and close-knit group of our most passionate fans. They get a number of interesting perks. Full details can be read here.
Our Instagram @esclabR is about to hit 100 followers! Please help us hit our first big milestone!
Again, thank you for being part of the esc lab family. Until the next update!
10/21/2020 Update
A few days late with our update, apologies! All three of us have been heads down moving everything forward to get our Series 00 IC v2.0 and GB ready. As said previously, we will be running the IC for Series 00 once more, this time, with prototypes in hands so you can see all the colors and material in person. This IC v2.0 will run on Geekhack, Reddit (/r/mkb and /r/mm), Keebtalk, and tentatively Zfrontier.
Series 00 IC v2.0
Series 00 IC v2.0 is still on track for early-to-mid November. Prior to launching that IC, we need to get the following milestones to be finalized.
IC v2.0 will have a similar survey with additional questions for us to gain more insight and make better decisions.
This survey will likely run shorter than the previous survey.
Prototypes
Prototype production is full steam ahead and is on schedule. We had a good extra looks at the raw CNC fresh-off-the-press, and was very pleased. The prototypes have just gone through sandblast/mirrorPolish + additional processing, and is currently going through anodization. We are still on track of being able to have the protos in-hand in 1-2 weeks (Cubic will get them first because he’s in Hong Kong, with Isshin and I getting them a few days later). We are very happy with what we are seeing so far, and more excited to get to see them in person. And even more excited to share with you all for the first time!
Packaging
We are currently experimenting with a number of different package designs + goodies on the inside. You likely wont know what our packaging will look like until you get a Series 00 in your hands. We can’t show our full hand too early, can we? Haha.
Proxies and Pricing
In order to make sure we are available in every continent of the world (except for Antarctica), we will be announcing our full proxy list either during the IC or prior to the GB. We are very excited and honored to be working with the best and most reputable in the community.
The announcement for pricing will also follow the same schedule.
The Insiders
Last week, we excitedly yet discreetly launched “The Insiders”, a program to thank our most passionate supporters. We currently invited five members as part of the inaugural launch.
We will be sharing more in the upcoming weeks more details on what this program is, how to be invited to it, and what benefits you get by being part of it.
P.S. One perk of being an “Insider” is first-look at any news related to esc lab, including early looks at prototypes before anyone other than the founders have seen them.
Social
We have updated our Discord to be better categorized, promoted a new mod (hi Lumis #1203!), added new hobby channels, and just in general preparing for an influx of new people when we launch our IC.
We post daily design inspiration on our IG @esclabR if you have not followed us already!
Finally
The future of esc lab is something that really excites me. For now, I cannot share what’s cooking behind the scene. But we will be sharing when the time is right!
This week’s update is shorter, because all three of us are in “ship it” mode. 80% of designing MKB products are stuff that very few actually sees.
Once more — thank you for everyone’s support, feedback, criticisms, introductions, and more. Whether your comments are positive, or push us to become better, we appreciate each and every one of them. Take care and stay safe.
10/12/2020 Update
Hey all! It's been a very fast moving week as we are all hands on deck to move Series 00 forward. Let's get to the updates.
Manufacturing
We have submitted our designs to the manufacturer in various finishes and surfaces and materials for prototyping. The timeline for when we will reveal the protos is hazy as we may be happy with the first proto batch, or we won't be happy until 2-3 revisions. So stay tuned. IC2 will launch as soon as we are happy with what we see from our manufacturer.
Packaging design is in progress, and our next step is to submit to our packaging vendor.
IC2
We learned quite a lot from the first IC. We learned that there is interest for Series 00. But more importantly, we learned that it is a lot better if we have prototypes available to show for ICs that are not keycap sets. So we will doing a second IC with prototypes to show, so the community can better accurately gauge their interest level in Series 00. This IC will run on Geekhack + Reddit.
IC2 will run shorter than IC1 (which spanned for a little more than a month), for about 2 weeks max. We will be GBing Series 00 regardless, because we see that this is an underserved design language in the MKB community, and we see Series 00 as just the start of much more ambitious projects to come.
The GB will follow the end of IC2, and we will announce our final proxies/vendors + price between the time period of IC2 and the GB.
Easter Egg
Rule change: We hear those that find the egg first loud and clear ( @Liz#1313 cough). Moving forward, we will implement the following raffle system change IF there are multiple winners. 1st finder gets 4 raffle entries, 2nd finder gets 3 entries, 3rd finder gets 2, and everyone else gets 1 entry like normal. Yes, I've been working out so I can spin the wheel for longer, LOL.
Rule change 2: If you have previously won an Easter Egg hunt, you can participate in the hunt, but your raffle entry will not count, so we can give other people a chance.
Rule change 3: We will be asking for email + a choice of Discord, Geekhack, or Reddit username to make sure people aren’t stuffing multiple entries as different people. This is to keep the competition fair for everyone. If you are caught submitting multiple entries for Easter Eggs, unfortunately, it won’t be good news for you.
IC2 will also launch the Easter Egg Hunt #3. This one will be fun. We will announce the hunt going live on the #easter-egg-hunt channel on Discord + in our IC2 thread. For this one, we recommend you all collaborate in the channel. You probably will need it. Or maybe you will use it to mislead others ;)?
In terms of the Easter Egg prize giveaway, this is how the prototype choices will be made. The first Easter Egg #1 winner will get first proto choice. Then the first winner of Easter Egg #2 will get the second choice. Then the second winner of Egg #2 (@Jefff#9976) will get third choice. And so on, and so forth, until we run out of prototypes. Judging by the events we have planned, we will be giving away about six Series 00 prototypes.
We will be doing smaller Easter Egg hunts where we will give away esc lab swag to fill the gap of the bigger Easter Egg hunts. More information about this later.
Pricing
I know you all really want to know the pricing for Series 00, and we are excited to share them as well. We will announce the final pricing per region this once we finalize the prototype + announce our vendors, which will happen as soon as IC2, and at latest, during the GB announcement.
Design
We covered the major design changes in an earlier update, so I won't repeat this one. We did implement a number of minor but important design changes, and we will share this once our prototypes land. We think you'll like them, though!
If you are interested in the aesthetic of what we do, you may enjoy our Instagram account @esclabr (https://instagram.com/esclabr) where we share our favorite daily inspiration. We post twice a day at 10 AM and 6 PM PST.
That is all for now — thank you all for being part of our journey. It’s been a pleasure chatting with each of you on Discord, email, Geekhack, Reddit, etc. We’re excited to share what we’ve been working on, and the future of esc lab products. Words are cheap, so we’ll get back to work, and end it here.
As always, we are available on Discord for any questions by Cubic, loop, and Isshin, and we’re also available on hello@esclab.co
Cheerio.
Update on esc lab moving forward
We are happy to hear all the responses towards Series 00 the past few weeks from the community. For the sake of transparency and responsibility to you all, we wanted to share some information about esc lab and the team moving forward.
esc lab’s team consists of three tech & design enthusiasts. Isshin (industrial designer) and I loop (product manager) are based in the United States, where both went to college and currently work in the US. Cubic (industrial designer) operates out of HK in charge of our logistics, design, and manufacturing, and also went to college + worked in the US prior.
esc lab is being registered in HK because it's closer to Cubic and our manufacturing vendors, thus easier to work with when we request prototypes, packaging samples, and in-person manufacturer quality control.
The pricing of Series 00 will take into account the quality of materials, finish, coloring, coating, and design. While we haven’t finalized pricing, we aim to have each artisan to be under $100, and will be tiered based on different factors. We are doing everything in our power to reduce prices for our early adopters. We will announce our final pricing before group buy.
We want to share some of the lessons we’ve learned in the last few days as well.
I (loop) personally moved too fast with esc lab’s branding, resulting in the ® being added too early to our graphics assets and copy despite our registration not being approved yet. I appreciate the people that pointed it out, and it is something we are rectifying moving forward by removing it in our copy and branding until further notice.
We've learned that the keyboard community takes a different approach with their design, branding, and language, and we're eager to offer our products all the same. To improve transparency, we will be posting weekly updates to our site and Discord for status on our product development, manufacturing, packaging, logistics, marketing, and more.
The Geekhack IC was removed by moderators/admins due to containing personal information. Our Reddit IC thread in /r/mkb and /r/mm are both up, and can be found here and here. We will re-post our IC into Geekhack once our prototypes arrive and pass our QC.
Thank you for all the helpful feedback and constructive criticism. We’ve realized there were some significant mis-steps in our first IC, and seriously hope to keep learning and improving with the community. I have personally read many comments out there of us (Discord, GH, Reddit, etc), and take each of them to heart as a way to improve.
If you have any questions, doubts, and concerns, I am always available to chat on our Discord or through hello@esclab.co.
09/28/2020 Update. Easter Egg Hunt #2!
Hey all!
We hope you've had a good week so far.
We are very excited to provide with you an update on everything that’s going on behind the scenes after we launched the Series 00 IC. Once again, we thank you for taking the time to support our project.
We have been poring over the feedback from our IC form submissions and general feedback over Geekhack/Reddit. Within 24 hours, we received hundreds of responses. We thank every one of you for your submissions, whether they were critical or positive! Keep them coming. We’re always listening.
We can't necessarily address each feedback explicitly as details may shift, but we will try our best.
1. Easter Egg Hunt
🥳🥚We have Easter Egg #2 hunt live on the website right now. Winners will be entered into a raffle to receive an esc lab care package filled with exclusive products and prototypes that will never be on sale.
Hint: Early birds that try different URLs may get the early worm..
2. Pricing
We cannot reveal concrete prices yet until we receive our prototypes to ensure they meet our quality and your expectations.
However, you can expect the price to be competitive with existing premium metal artisans. Note that pricing may differ depending on the material + finish + coating. Different CMF (color, material, finish) uses different manufacturing methods, thus a price discrepancy. With that said, while esc lab designs premium products, we do want everyone that wants them to get their hands on them, so we will not set a price that neglects those that want them! Our unlimited GB for Series 00 also means anyone that wants one, will get one. However, do set your alarms though, as the Series ID sequential numbering that’s engraved on each Series 00 artisan IS order time based. If you want the #1, #2, #3, etc numbers, you better be fast. Or maybe you like the #69 or #420 ones?
3. Prototype + manufacturing
Cubic is currently communicating with our vendors about Series 00. Due to a national holiday, the feedback and reviews will take longer than expected.
4. Design (color, material, and finish)
It seems this cubic and boxy silhouette is a little polarizing! The people that love it, love it. The people that don't like it, believe it to be incomplete or not fitting existing profiles. We were totally expecting this! We are happy that Series 00 makes a statement and is unique from existing trends. Not to say we are trying to be different for different sake, but we genuinely design for what we would put on our desks, and the Series 00' silhouette is definitely something we are proud of. There were asks about profiles for other rows, and ones for 6.25u, 2u, and 7u keys. These are all great feedback, and we will absorb this internally.
There were also asks about the “esc” engraving on the side of Series 00, and what about if people want to put them in non-esc key locations. This is terrific feedback, and we will discuss with the team about this.
People also do not like that Series 00 is 0.5 mm taller than a typical R1 Cherry profile. We hear you loud and clear.
There were concerns on finger prints and oils especially on the polished versions of Series 00. We hear you, and we will definitely discuss this internally to see what we can do.
There were an incredible amount of requests for different colors, finishes, materials, and remixes of the Series 00 design. All we can say is, stay tuned :)
Oh, we will be sure to make sure Series 00 won’t cut you. We know those renders look.. sharp. Ba-dum-tss.
Fun fact, those edges are known as “safety fillets” in the manufacturing world.
5. About esc lab
A little more about us -- our founders are hobbyists and tech nerds that enjoy good design, manufacturing, and minimal things.
I (the guy writing this update) am a product manager by trade, so I have experience handling the various parts of building + managing a team and product. For esc lab, I handle the majority of the marketing, social media, higher level conceptualization & design, website building, branding, community outreach, and basically whatever a stupid PM does.
Cubic is an industrial designer by trade. He has much manufacturing experience and relationships with factories. He also has won a number of industrial design awards.
We decided to start esc lab because we saw that there wasn't really a big presence in keyboard designs that fare towards minimal and brutalist themes, a design language that both Cubic and I love. We also love how open source and collaborative the MKB community is, a trait we both share. We made the decision that our products will use premium materials with high quality manufacturing methods, and we will do our best to QC our products so you get a premium experience.
That is not to say we won't make mistakes! We will. But we will learn from each mistake so each iteration will be better than the ones before it.
We appreciate you coming along for the ride and trusting us.
6. Surprises
Due to a popular… ahem… request, we have taken steps to create a new SKU for our supporters. You will have to find out in our next updates ;).
We will also have more easter egg hunts available so you can get your hands on a sweet care package with esc lab goodies.
Congrats ow****@gmail.com for being the first winner of our care package drop, by the way!
Finally,
Our survey showed us that many of you will be first time owners of artisans. We thank you for trusting us with your first experience. We aim to provide for you a premium first artisan experience.