Perfectly Peculiar Pixels [#23]

They say you can take a product designer out of product design, but you can’t take product design out of a product designer. So today we’re dealing with hardware. To the shock of many a millennial, the gen z onward crowd will have grown up with, and will be most accustomed to, and will therefore do most of their work on touchscreens and touchpads. Yet despite that, the lack of haptic feedback, discounting the slight, comforting buzz you get from the keyboard, if you haven’t turned it off to preserve battery, still drives people, and certainly professionals, towards more or less specialized hardware.

In 2023, the global market for mechanical keyboards was around 1.4B$, which sure sounds like we enjoy it when things just click. There is only so much real estate on screen, and there are only so many keys on the boards. So what do you do to get better use out of the things you might have, and where can you go from there?

I got this mechanical numpad after I realized InDesign can’t create shortcuts for character and paragraph styles with anything other than numpad keys, which my otherwise comfortingly compact K810 does not have. It uses Cherry MX brown switches, which, for the uninitiated, are the most basic, the most vanilla, the most Honda Accord of switches out there, but they work fine, not unlike the average Honda. The numpad keys are fully programmable with 4 layers of functions - more than I can honestly currently even keep track of in my head without a cheat sheet. The reason I keep it on the left is because the modifier keys - your command/control, alt/option, and shifts are there to augment your selection - something which would require both hands were the numpad on the right. This makes it way easier to control when you have a stylus in your right hand. I would love to get feedback from left handed people if the experience holds true when you draw with your left hand though. No link here as this isn’t an endorsement of any particular product, and more of the idea of using a numpad/macropad.

If you give Jazza’s channel a glance, you’ll notice that he’s an incredibly talented, true-to-the-word multidisciplinary artist. Ranging from sculpture, and oil painting, to digital painting and 3D design, there seems to be very little things this guy hasn’t tried. So when he endorses a productivity controller, I for one listen. Not because I’m ready to drop 90$-300$ on a device I never tried, but I will value the input at least. Unlike the Numpad trick which can cost you nothing to try if you just get a second keyboard from someone, rarities like this are much more of a gamble. However, if nothing else it’s worth pointing out the design philosophy that went into it. It’s something that can be best copied in other physical devices and dashboards - but the design principle will also lend itself to e.g. the believability of diegetic interfaces as well.

Some of you have only recently started working in 3D, and the point in the learning process where you get to this stage will vary wildly from person to person. Eventually, though, you will reach a point where you will think to yourself “can’t this go any faster?” Naturally, by that point, none of us might bother with 3D, “because A.I.”, but humouring the on going albeit decreasingly necessary human input in the realm of 3D, you might resort to something like an omni directional mouse. The one pictured above has been discontinued, but as the show had to go on, there is naturally a replacement. If you’re feeling adventurous you might even want to build one yourself. Some. Have. Certainly tried. And given the closed nature of the 3D Connexion (offshoot of Logitech, in case you’re wondering) eco-system, there might even be a chance of the handmade options being better in the long run as the drivers die out, or never get fleshed out in the first place. 6-axis of the most fiddly controller you can ever experience, can however speed up your 3D workflow by controlling the camera with one hand, as you manipulate the scene with the other. Personally, this is a thing you don’t get before your 3rdish year of dealing heavily with 3D, because only then will you get the most out of it.

We mentioned the Windows/Playstation version of Road Rash back in Issue #17, as something that still stands out of the crowd when it comes to graphical representation. Road Redemption is what is affectionately called a spiritual successor to that game. Enjoyable, considerably more streamlined than the original, and visually sadly, very, very forgettable. It’s games like these that make me question whether the jank, the jagged edges of games past was what gave them character, or if it is just my nostalgia. Games like Arctic Eggs go out of their way to synthesize the PS1 era look for example. I can’t help thinking there’s charm missing from the game when your head on collision results in an instant respawn; instead of flying over the handles and having miraculously survived the landing, a mile later, watch your character walk slowly all the way back to pick up the bike. It’s free on Epic until Thursday, 14th.

When the mice strike back