SA Motorsport Selectric
This is a new set designed as an homage to classic motorsports.
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Details
- Designed by switchbox.studio and Madmax13
- Doubleshot ABS
- Manufactured by Signature Plastics
Inspiration
I fucking hate this -Blacksimon
We designed Motorsport Selectric to invoke classic liveries from the golden age of sports car racing, between the mid-1960s and ‘70s. One of the era’s most famous and distinctive liveries belongs to Gulf Motorsport, whose name and colors appear on winning cars from many races, including the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans. Despite the brand’s dissolution in 1985, the livery and colorway endure to this day both within and outside of motorsports. Racing fans worldwide know this livery for its bright orange and powder blue.
The IBM Selectric typewriter and subsequent namesake Signature Plastics SA kits are also primary influences for this set. While the SA Selectric kits came before my time in the hobby, I think they demonstrate how uniquely suited the SA profile is to icon modifier legends. While the Selectric kits represented the dominant source of icon mods in the SA profile, they lacked any examples for Print Screen, Pause, and Scroll Lock keys. With this in mind, we have designed double shot friendly versions based on publicly available icons that have previously appeared on popular dye-sub keysets.
As a further homage to the theme, we have developed new arrows reminiscent of the US standard W1-8 chevron alignment signage used to indicate sharp turns, shown Below.
I designed this set with the stock Signature Plastics colors in mind and listed them on the kitting renders.
A note on Gulf Livery and colors
Gulf livery is something that hasn’t been static in the 60 years that it has graced racetracks. Different cars from different years have different interpretations of the colors. For example, some cars have black pinstriping, some don’t. On some racing vehicles, the orange is a bit more on the red side, on others, it is more yellow. The blue is different in every racecar that has ever worn the livery, going from a very desaturated powder blue to a blue-green that I dare call seafoam. The point is, I have done my very best to capture the Gulf Livery as I remember it on the GT40, which is a powder blue with a warm orange accent and black pinstriping. To check me on this point, Gulf has a pretty interesting history of different historical racers wearing the livery, linked below.
Gulf Livery
I chose to maintain stock colors for my livery. About four blues and five oranges would work for this livery, but this is the one I chose.
Kitting
I designed the kits to conform to guidance suggesting a monokit alongside a set of smaller, more focused kitting. As such, I made the monokit to work with UK ISO and ANSI keyboard standards, modern Alice, full size, and Happy Hacking Keyboards with a full set of novelties. This monokit is for people who just need a bit of everything.
I designed the small kits around an “alpha +” strategy, in which a consumer with a normal enthusiast keyboard (smaller than or equal to a TKL using ANSI layout with Tsangan bottom row support) must only buy the alpha kit plus another modifier kit. I designed this to minimize the number of different kits that users need to buy to cover their keyboard. 1800 or full-size keyboard users will need to purchase the number pad kit, and Alice users will need to buy the “extras” kit. I modeled the “40s and Ortho” kit around DSS After School with extensive feedback and iteration from the 40s Discord server.
Renders
Renders were made under different lighting conditions to show how the colors might react under different color temperatures.
Special thanks to the keyboard design collective and Seattle mechanical keyboards for their feedback.
