Mode Designs is the Los Angeles house of premium CNC-aluminium enthusiast keyboard kits.

Mode Designs brings the round its high end — the Los Angeles house whose premium, CNC-machined aluminium keyboard kits, sold at retail rather than by group buy, sit at the grown-up top of the enthusiast scene. Mode Designs makes premium keyboard kits, and its answer to a round about the board-builders is craft and design: not an affordable prebuilt but a considered, machined object with its own mounting engineering. A board, machined to order.

Its identity is the boutique CNC keyboard house. Mode Designs’ CNC-aluminium kits, its Crown mounting system and its design pedigree are the story here. A board, boutique. The boutique CNC keyboard house.

(Honest notes, so the story stays precise. Mode Designs — at modedesigns.com, and always Mode Designs rather than the generic word Mode — makes premium, boutique enthusiast keyboard kits: current boards such as the Prologue, Encore and Sonnet, legacy models including the Eighty, Envoy and SixtyFive, plus its own switches and keycap sets. It was founded in 2020 by Jaicob Stewart and Brad Mello, with the designer Matthew Encina as chief design officer, and is based in Los Angeles; the founding year and founder names rest on a single secondary source, so we frame them as reported. Its signature engineering is a proprietary Crown mounting system, with lattice and top-mount options, and it is notable for being retail-available rather than group-buy-only, a more grown-up route in a scene built on limited runs. On where it is made — a theme of this round — Mode Designs does not publish a manufacturing location, so we do not claim the United States or China and say the location is not published. On ownership, it reads as independent and privately held, inferred from the absence of any acquisition record. One thing to keep straight: the keyboard figure Taeha Types has built and promoted Mode boards but runs a separate brand and is not a Mode Designs founder. Its marks — Mode Designs — are IP we describe but do not reproduce, and there is no official brand hex; these tones are an unofficial interpretation. This is design commentary and does not promote any product.)

Mode Designs lives in an anthracite blue. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Mode Designs’ identity is premium, machined and considered — an anthracite blue, an ink, a silver, a deep slate, and a paper. The palette leans anthracite blue and silver: a cool, refined register that nods to machined aluminium and a boutique house rather than a loud palette. It signals a premium enthusiast maker. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these values are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party colours.

The lesson is an anthracite blue signals a premium, machined identity. Mode Designs’ world is a premium, machined object. For designers, it is a reminder that a cool anthracite and a soft silver can carry a keyboard brand — the tone of CNC aluminium. Because these tones can fail as small text, keep type dark and let the colour live in the accents, palette and band. The takeaways: build at the high end; engineer a signature; sell at retail not just group buy; and treat any single hex as unofficial.

The register is a machined serif — premium, precise, considered.

Mode Designs’ identity carries a premium, precise, considered spirit — a boutique house, not a mass maker. A machined serif captures the mood: refined, deliberate and a little classic, the register of a CNC-aluminium board built to order. Set in an anthracite-blue palette, the machined serif feels premium and precise — exactly the personality Mode Designs carries. It is machined metal rather than a logo, mirroring anodised aluminium. (Mode Designs’ real wordmark, and its board designs, are things we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not ours to use.) Because it is not ours to use, the honest description is “a machined-serif spirit,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the board: premium, precise and considered.

Mode Designs stands for the boutique CNC keyboard house.

Mode Designs brings the round its high end. An anthracite-blue palette, a machined serif and a CNC board make one thing — the boutique CNC keyboard house — the whole identity: premium, machined and considered. The Crown mounting system is the differentiator, and the retail-available craft is the meaning. The point is a Los Angeles house that treats a keyboard as a machined, designed object, with its own mounting engineering, sold at retail rather than through group buys.

Put to work, the identity is boutique craft told straight, as design. A maker in this spirit would build at the high end, engineer a signature, and sell at retail. A reader in this spirit would keep the facts right: Mode Designs was founded in 2020 by Jaicob Stewart and Brad Mello, with Matthew Encina as chief design officer, in Los Angeles, framed as reported; its signature is the proprietary Crown mounting system; it is retail-available rather than group-buy-only; it does not publish a manufacturing location, so neither the US nor China is claimed; it reads as independent and privately held; and it should not be confused with the separate Taeha Types brand. Mode Designs sits in the round’s positioning spectrum at the boutique-premium end, the counterweight to the budget brands, and its where-made thread is honest silence — the location is simply not published. The honest editorial moves are to frame the founding and founders as reported, to say the manufacturing location is not published, to keep it distinct from Taeha Types, and to always write Mode Designs. The lesson Mode Designs teaches is that boutique craft can be a whole identity, and honesty about the undisclosed making keeps the craft credible.

For designers and brand-builders, Mode Designs continues the board-builders: build at the high end — and engineer a signature. The lessons: aim for the premium tier; own a proprietary engineering idea; choose retail availability over scarcity; say the location is unpublished rather than guess; and never reproduce a logo. It is also a reminder to stay precise: Mode Designs is the Los Angeles house of premium CNC-aluminium enthusiast keyboard kits — with the palette here an unofficial interpretation, and the manufacturing location honestly left unstated. Read that way, Mode Designs is less a board than a boutique: a machined, designed object with its own mounting engineering. The lesson for a brand is that boutique craft and honesty about the unpublished making reinforce each other, and refusing to guess a location keeps the craft earned. Mode Designs made the-boutique-CNC-keyboard-house the identity — proof that premium craft can define a maker.

Keep Mode Designs’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.