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.