When Tae Ha Kim started streaming himself establishing mechanical keyboards on Twitch roughly two years in the past, he didn’t assume it will be a viable substitute for his San Francisco programming profession. And he by no means imagined it will result in designing customized equipment for a few of the high online game gamers on the earth. However, the 24-year-old California native has discovered a novel area of interest on Twitch and YouTube that mixes bespoke product design with a rising curiosity within the broader gaming neighborhood for high-end, customized peripherals like keyboards and mice.
Now, below the banner of Taeha Types, Kim designs and assembles high-priced keyboards for a fee by sourcing uncommon and limited-run parts from throughout the globe. “In case you’re a streamer or somebody working within the video content material creation house, no one sees what automobile you drive or what home you reside in,” Kim tells The Verge. “However you’re exhibiting off the tech you utilize more often than not. So it is sensible when you consider it. These excessive-profile streamers, players, and content material creators need to have the high-end gear they exhibit whereas they’re streaming and doing their jobs.”
The Keyboard Was Built By Tae Ha Kim, Who is Known for His Mechanical keyboard-focused YouTube and Twitch channels, “Taeha Types.”
Most just lately, Kim put collectively a customized mechanical keyboard for Turner “Tfue” Tenney, one of many world’s hottest Twitch streamers and among the many most well-known Fortnite opponents presently enjoying the sport.
Tfue was already a customized keyboard fanatic, after beginning out early on in his Fortnite stardom serving to popularize a 60 % keyboard — a compact mannequin ultimate for gaming due to how little house it takes up — known as the Ducky One 2 Mini. They graduated from there to extra luxurious fashions designed and assembled by a rising neighborhood of mechanical keyboard fans like Kim, who caught Tfue’s eye when he marketed his companies within the streamer’s Twitch chat.
Tfue’s keyboard, additionally a 60 % mannequin, options an exotic-looking case, mixing reflective coatings of indigo and turquoise throughout the underside. Kim labored intently with North Carolina-based custom keyboard shop Keycult, one of his primary sponsors, to get the customized case and circuit board manufactured. He landed on anodized aluminum to realize a pure gradient coloration scheme, together with a chrome steel midpiece that provides it with substantial heft.
On high, the keyboard makes use of common NovelKeys Cream switches, which function as a light-weight and hypnotizing click-on sound not like that of a sprig that can be shaken, as one astute commenter and Taeha Sorts fan identified on YouTube. (NovelKeys is one other of Kim’s sponsors.) Kim additionally selected a GMK Striker keycap set from a Spanish designer recognized online solely as “Zambumon.” The Striker keycaps use the blue hues of the Japanese nationwide soccer staff and have each English and Hiragana character. The of entirety is Tfue’s online deal emblazoned within the higher proper-hand nook of the keyboard.
The entire package deal — together with Kim’s fee charges for developing the design alongside Keycult, sourcing the elements, and assembling it — got here out to $3,500, Kim says. The design got here collectively over quite a few back-and-forths with Tfue to determine what coloration schemes he appreciated and the forms of switches and keycaps he was excited about, and Kim then labored with Keycult to make it an actuality.
The streamer unboxed the keyboard stays on his Twitch channel to almost 30,000 viewers on Monday afternoon, with a mic held up shut so viewers may hear the Cream switches as he examined them out. “That is the nicest keyboard I’ve ever seen,” Tfue mentioned. “And it’s mine, which makes it even cooler.”
It was one other success for Kim, who says his ardor isn’t as a lot within the keyboards themselves, however in constructing a platform to speak about, stream, and {photograph} them. He’s additionally keen to teach newcomers in regards to the interest, which he says has solely actually begun to explode within a final couple of years.
“It’s very community-driven by people who’re excessive fans,” he says. “Now that we’re beginning to see this publicity, individuals are attempting to scale up and make it user-friendly.”
The extra basic curiosity in these peripherals will be neatly tracked to the rise of e-sports stars and gaming celebrities. Very similar to how conventional athletes drive curiosity in the whole lot from jewelry and garments to footwear and athletic gear, gaming personalities are doing the identical for what they put on on stream and the tech equipment they use to play video games.
Tfue’s different main up-to-date, fellow Fortnite streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has his personal shoe taken care of Adidas, and earlier than that he had a signature gaming mouse from the Supreme-like peripheral firm Finalmouse, which sells solely limited-run batches of merchandise just a few instances a yr in shock on-line “drops.” The “Air58 Ninja,” as it was known as, was an ultra-light machine designed in partnership with the streamer and featured his signature subsequent to the scroll wheel. Numerous different large names in gaming have signature PlayStation controllers, gaming PC circumstances, and different gear followers should buy to indicate help and, very similar to carrying the footwear and jerseys of conventional athletes, try to emulate their favorite gamers.
Kim sits exterior this extra industrial ecosystem, the place he sees himself as extra of a knowledgeable marketing consultant than a full-blown product designer. He is aware of the suitable suppliers to get uncommon keycaps and switches, and he is aware of the customized producers that can make one-off elements like Tfue’s anodized aluminum case if he asks for it.
“I’m nonetheless not totally into the entire manufacturing house. A lot of the customized commissions I do, I work with Keycult, and I’ve my very own community of producers and suppliers I additionally work with,” he says. “I don’t view myself as a designer or producer per se. I’m extra of a dealer or intermediary that sources particular elements.”
Kim says he doesn’t even make most of his cash from commissions. As an alternative, what’s allowed him to show keyboard design and building right into a full-time job is his Twitch channel, the place he will get donations and subscriber income each time he goes stay. That’s the place Kim sees his future — as a content material creator within the ever-expanding mechanical keyboard house.
“I undoubtedly wasn’t the primary content material creator for the mechanical keyboard scene,” Kim says. “One factor I believe I supplied otherwise was I made the media straightforward to eat for newcomers.”
One commenter referred to Kim because of the “Bob Ross of keyboard making,” and it’s an acceptable evaluation. What makes the movies so interesting is Kim’s regular, soothing narration of the fairly technical keyboard-building course of. He walks by every step slowly and accentuates the precision concerned in, says, soldering the important thing switches onto the printed circuit board. He additionally fields stay questions from his Twitch chat about his work, the elements he finds, and why he enjoys doing what he does. All of the whereas, gentle lounge music performs in the background.
To Kim’s shock, the urge for food for the sort of content material has been fairly giant. When Kim posted a 16-minute minimize of his multi-hour Twitch stream assembling Tfue’s keyboard on January 19th, it instantly blew up. It has since amassed almost 2 million views on YouTube. One other video of him constructing a customized keyboard for common Apex Legends streamer Coby “Dizzy” Meadows’s final yr, which includes the total two-hour and 44-minute stay stream from his Twitch channel, has been watched almost 800,000 instances.
Kim even makes ASMR typing videos with totally constructed commissions, a few of which garner lots of thousands of views. “Sure folks have completely different preferences, For me, acoustics I prioritize over really feel. My viewers know that” he says. “So once they come into my stream we usually speak about how a sure construct sounds on the finish fairly a bit.” In early January, Kim’s channel surpassed 100,000 YouTube subscribers. Within the two months since, he’s gained almost 50,000 extra. On Twitch, Kim has amassed almost 70,000 Twitch followers.
Apart from The Gasket, Kim Said that things like Aluminum, steel, High-quality Parts, Design, Manufacturing, And the fact that it’s a one-off Make up the keyboard’s $3,500 total price tag.
Kim says his curiosity in mechanical keyboards stems not from gaming, but from a lifelong fascination with dexterous duties, from bodily puzzles to sleight-of-hand magic tips. “As a child, I used to be very into speedcubing,” he says, referencing the application of fixing the Rubik’s dice at blazing velocity. One other curiosity of Kim’s was typing. “Typing was a factor I all the time needed to be good at and needed to be higher than my pals at,” he says. (Kim now checks his commissioned keyboards with stay sort checks on Twitch, the place he repeatedly clocks in at greater than 120 phrases per minute.)
However, it wasn’t till Kim constructed his first severe gaming PC in faculty, at UC Berkeley, that he started “to look significantly into what sort of choices there have been for a pleasant keyboard.” That led him to research varied mechanical keyboard communities on the web. “I used to be a pc science engineer earlier than I stop to pursue this full time, and I knew forward of time I might be typing on a desk for many of my life. So I form of fell into the rabbit gap,” he says. “What actually opened my eyes was the mechanical keyboard subreddit. And I simply form of fell in, perhaps too deep, I assume.”
Kim started Twitch streaming his assemblies while working at IBM within the San Francisco Bay Space. However, after six months or so, he had gained a sufficiently big following to start opening his Taeha Sorts platform to commissions. Final yr, he was income-sufficient cash to really feel comfy ditching San Francisco for Southern California and creating keyboard content material full time. He presently lives in Corona, exterior Los Angeles, the place he has entry to a serious nexus of Twitch, YouTube, and gaming personalities.
His purpose now’s to construct his Twitch and YouTube channels and to develop into a revered supply of data on mechanical keyboards that can proceed to send big-name streamers his means. “I’ve all the time been into pictures and videography, perhaps much more so than keyboards,” he says of specializing in his channels. “And there’s an enormous ignorance I’m hoping to fill in simply making YouTube movies.”
Someday, although, Kim says he hopes his experience will let him transition from sourcing the elements and assembling the general keyboards to truly designing parts himself. “For the close to future, I believe I’ll nonetheless stay a content material creator,” he says. “However as a result of my extra expertise, I might like to get into product design myself.”
