Hasta La Ideas

One of the greatest accomplishments for a young designer is to bring their first product to market. For many designers right out of school, it can take years to see a project put into production and is often a learning process in itself. We are happy to report that one of our featured and favorite Coroflot projects is taking the next step.

We first featured Michael Roopenian’s Engrain Keyboard prototype on Coroflot in 2011 when it was his Master’s Thesis project at the Pratt Institute. At the time, the project was simply a thoughtful response to incorporating natural tactility into a user interface. Roopenian used a combination of traditional woodworking, sandblasting and lasercutting to produce and prototype. While the project was nice for school, it wasn’t immediately scalable for production.

The original 2011 prototype

Two years later, Roopenian looks to produce the keyboard for production with new packaging, updated materials list and, of course, a good ol’ fashioned Kickstarter campaign. After spending six months of development, the production version of the Engrain Keyboard emerged in sassafras with a Danish Oil finish (the original prototype was pine), complete with a sleek packaging design.

We caught up with Michael to hear about the new developments, scaling up production and lessons learned.

Core77: What are some of the major design developments since the 2011 version?

Michael Roopenian: The biggest development was the switch from using Pine wood to Sassafras. As you can imagine, the soft pine also just doesn’t hold up like a hardwood. Sassafras, when sandblasted, provided a more toned-back texture with similar properties, and ended up being a good compromise between tactility and true keyboard functionality. From the beginning, I knew I had a concept that people were interested in, but bringing it to reality was all about finding the right balance.

The other major developments revolved around the system of installation, which uses the off-cut wood as a mounting bracket. This simple method of installation was another key to really making it a viable product that anyone could buy and install flawlessly themselves.

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