The Full Process

Idea

Collector card games such as Magic The Gathering or Pokemon and other forms have always attracted me by the cards' art and design and satisfied my collector mindset.  Now this project is not meant to be a game of any sort, but rather a tool or addition that could be used during keyboard meetups (Where custom keyboard hobbyist gather and show their keyboard builds). This card intends to give the viewer of the product an easy way to learn more about the keyboard, specifications, and extra photographs, and easily save for later viewing. 

Research

Looked at past keyboard meetups that happened in the past 3 years, which included hand-out cards where you can write the keyboard details onto the designated areas on the paper. I also had to research different NFC types, storage sizes, shapes, and colors of the NFC tag. 

Designing

I started by choosing the details that I would like to appear on the card, this ended up being

• Keyboard name

• brand

• plate material

• mount style

• keycap set

• switch: spring weight, lubed, filmed

• other (misc)

• owner

• cost  

Later on, I decided to add the title "KeebCard" to give the card more depth. For the design, I went for minimalism and luxury with the white marble background with gold accents.  

Icons

The icons were designed in Illustrator with 2 simple rules kept in mind, consistency in line thicknesses, and for it to be viewable from a distance, the drawing part was straightforward, but I made sure the colors on the card were not pure black, but rather a shade off to contrast well with the white, but not too harshly.

Prototyping

To test the sizing and layout, I would send the file to my mobile to view it, and I would zoom in/out until the size of the image was exactly the card size (Bank card was used as a reference since the NFC card I would order later is the same size). After I reached a design I was more satisfied with, I started using the home printer. Finally, when I ended up with the design I liked, I connected my Excel file which listed each of my keyboards and components, then set up the Photoshop file to export the same image, with different data input. End result was 14 cards with the same layout, except the text and icons were different depending on the keyboard build. I then went to a printing shop and asked them to print it on hard paper and cut it to the exact size. Once the NFC cards arrived, I inserted the printed cards into the plastic sleeve that each NFC card came with which held them together nicely. This also allowed the cards to stand nicely in between the keycaps of a keyboard. 

This whole project is what caused this website to be created, in order to link each NFC card to the specific keyboard you were tapping.

Videography/Photography

I started with photographs where I lined up all the keyboards and set up the cards in parallel this simulated how it could potentially look like at a keyboard meetup. Then I proceeded with the video in which I displayed how the card functions, which is the video that can be at the top of this page. (The blue card sleeves were what I thought I'd use first, but it ended up being too bulky)

Reflection