Not so much found, but actually submitted: Florent Linguenheld and their partner designed two keyboards that are filled with character and attention to detail.
In a combination of electrical design and art, Florent teamed up with their wife to add some very cutesy characters to their design. It’s reflected in the contours of the board, too, with nibbles taken out of it – it must’ve been tasty, but please don’t nibble your PCBs at home 😉
This post is part of a series on unique keyboards of which I’ve collected pictures over the years. All of the keyboards in the series were designed by fellow community members. At the time, I rarely collected context or the source, so information may be lacking at times.
You can find the files to this project at the Chew project on Github. They’re open source, so you can make one of your own, too!
Why is it special?
- The boards have character! You can really see how the artist put their heart in it. It’s reflected in the characters and small details, and even the routing is done playfully. Split keyboards are getting pretty popular, but making a new original design that even has its own character is quite a challenge.
- Talking about attention to detail, even the build guides have cutesy images in them. Additionally, the build guide is pretty exhaustive, and it’s relatively rare for open source kits to come with a nice manual from its designer out of the box!
- Of course, the design itself has a relatively low number of keys, but especially the splay is quite aggressive. Most boards with splay come with a lower key count, but only few boards have their columns outlaid at these high angles. Whether you like that or not is up to personal preference.