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Hey - that's awesome. I'll have time to check it out in the next couple of days. Once you're ready I'll add in an illustrator version. Thanks again for your time and collaboration! |
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Hi, Sorry to jump in like this... Some comments:
First, thanks a lot and congratulations, this is a very nice and useful work! I love that you took time to redraw most of the signs in 'simplified' curves.
Second, what I saw as strange / maybe needing adjustments:
- some of the symbols are made with filled polygons (example: Black Up Arrow), and some are filled with patterned lines (examples : ' " ). I know that SVG and the way inkscape manipulates them can sometimes be... let's say challenging, so did you check on that? (maybe due to a conversion process... or drawing for a tracing machine / 3D printer?) It works OK for display, but I'm not sure that a printer would like it (especially printers for vinyl stickers or parametric printers - think of a plotter)
- video color inversion sign: one of the 'a' is a drawing, the other a letter in Helvetica, that is substituted on my computer.
More general: - should the signs be separated or left like this on a single page? I'm not sure what is more convenient... (and yes, I saw each symbol has its own layer, so it's already quite convenient).
All in all, again, thank you and great work!
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- The reason why I used patterned lines is because it is the easiest way to get rounded corners. Many of the symbols seem to have rounded corners. I did leave some of the shapes unfilled that do have rounded corners, so I will fill those.
- I'll convert the text into drawings so there isn't any issues between computers. Good catch.
- I had originally had them over a scan of the keyboard, but I didn't go off of any sizing.
Something else that does bother me a little is that some of the icons feel a little too 'chunky' to me. Particularly the @ symbol.
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For the patterns, I was just pointing that some symbols were drawn one way, and some an other way. I'll have a look for the "rounded corner" function in SVG, I kind of remember it does exist, but I may be hallucinating, and I'm not sure if it really does a round corner or if it does break the corner with a Bezier curve. As I said, SVG is quite extensively complex, and inkscape does its own thing sometimes. For the time being, if it works like this, it's best to leave it.
For the sizing, don't worry too much for now. As long as the relative size of the symbols are right, we can do some "vectorial" magic to resize everything!
For the "chunkyness", I need to pull my 701c out of storage to check your feeling, so that will happen over the weekend. Also, mine is an AZERTY keyboard, I'll have a look at the differences and/or extra symbols (I was thinking about é,è,à,ù, ...) I do think that some of the symbols were looking off already on the original keyboard, so your impression of @ being too fat may come from that.
But again, great work and thanks a lot!
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Hey @Ki11erRabbit, looking good! The icons look solid and consistent. A couple things to make sure before submitting your final version:
- Make sure you've converted all text to lines. There should be a "Conver to lines" option in your vector design software.
- When you add in the letters, I would suggest making each key grouped so one group would be the 0, ), and / all correctly sized for that one key.
- Add a decent amount of space in between keys for someone to be able to cut out and apply with a little margin to handle the transfer (if they use the dry transfer process).
- Can you make the icons black on white instead of the reverse when you're ready to upload? Totally get that its easier to do white on black when overlaying and designing, but when it comes to print-ready files I've found most of the time they're going to request black on white BG.
Once you're happy with it, I'll accept the PR and then convert it to a print-ready .ai file with the right size.
Thanks again for your work!
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I just had a look at one of my ThinkPads and noticed that my modded t430s has symbols that the same as the 701c. I might redo a few of them to match the t430s since the rounded edges I added could just be from age.
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Hey Matt, I have completed most of the symbols on the 701c keyboard. Some of them a little rough as I had to learn how use Inkscape for this task, but I think they came out well.
I started with the obvious symbols but quickly realized something about the regular symbols.
It seems that IBM used Helvetica for the keyboard lettering. However, either the design for some of Helvetica symbols changed overtime or didn't exist yet in the typeface.
I am not quite done yet, I just wanted to get your feedback before I do things like adjust spacing and union parts of the shapes to make things look nicer overall. But for now, I have the symbols in white on a black rectangle for visibility.