FrankenCases: phone cases assembled, not manufactured

Five designs.
The list goes first.

When Drop 001 opens, the waitlist gets in thirty minutes before everybody else, on any of the five. Two hundred and fifty of each design are made, every one numbered within its own design, and a design closes the moment its run is gone. The collection closes when the window ends, whatever is left. Nothing unsold is ever sold later, so a design that runs out of time at ninety is a run of ninety.

30 minutes of head start on the drop

Thirty minutes ahead of everybody on the day, with your own key

One email per drop. Nothing else, ever.

We keep your address and the day you joined. Not your name, not your location, not what you clicked. It lives on our own server rather than a mailing-list company, because it would be strange to build a keyboard that collects nothing and then hand your address to somebody else.

Macro of a curved needle pulling black waxed thread through the seam between two case panels.

What it is

A drawn monster, a published number, and two hundred and fifty of it.

Every case carries a monster with a face, drawn by hand in the one style this brand has: 1980s punk screen-print horror, heavy black outlines, flat colour, halftone dots, a plate that missed its mark. Under him is a ground nobody arranged by taste on the day. It is generated from a number, and the number is published before the drop opens, so a stranger can run it and get the same screen back. Drop 001 does that five times: The Patient, The Howler, The Thirst, The Wrapped and The Bride.

A normal case is one design stamped out ten thousand times. This is the opposite arrangement, and it is a worse business decision in every respect except the one that matters.

All of that is in the artwork. The object under it is a snap case: one piece of hard polycarbonate that clips onto the phone and comes off again, slim, ports open, wireless charging still working, matte. The artwork is dye-sublimated into that shell rather than laid on it as a film, which is why it goes right over the edge and why there is no sticker to peel. It is made for 24 phones across iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. No Google Pixel.

Designs

Each made

250

Reprints

Status

In production

One seed. Two bodies.

A design starts as a number. That number feeds a generator twice: once to draw the case, once to build the keyboard theme that goes with it. Same seed, same parts, two objects. One you can hold and one that lives on your screen. Drop 001 does that five times, with five numbers.

So the pairing is not a colour match somebody eyeballed afterwards. The two halves are siblings, and the keyboard half rides in the box on a card you scan.

The keyboard half is free, and always will be. You are paying for the object. Charging twice for one seed would be rude. The keyboard half is also Android: FrankenKeys is on Google Play and nowhere else, so an iPhone gets the case and not the pair.

A crowd of grinning green ghouls holding patchwork phone cases up over their heads.

How a drop works

Two hundred and fifty. Then the lights go out.

The seed is drawn, and published

One number goes in per design. The screen, its two inks and the keyboard theme that matches it come out; the monster printed over it is drawn. All five numbers, and the hash of each finished print file, go up before the drop opens, so the artwork is fixed in public and cannot be tidied up later.
Two hundred and fifty of each are made

Five designs, numbered 001 to 250 within their own design as they go out. There are five number ones. That is the whole run, with no second batch and no restock.
A design closes on its own, the collection closes on the clock

A design shuts the moment its 250 are gone, and the others carry on. The whole collection shuts when the window ends, whatever is left. Nothing unsold is ever sold later, so a design that times out at ninety is a run of ninety.
The next drop is a different collection

New seeds, new splices, new mistakes. Drop 001 does not come back, and neither does anybody who missed it.

Parts, pinned.

Everything on this board is on the page somewhere, smaller and on a pin. Pick one up if you like. It goes back.

Specimen 00 · the subject, rising

A length of black waxed thread through a seam.

Specimen 07 · the stitch. It is meant to show

Seed published before the drop opens.Run it yourself. You get this exact splice back.

Exhibit · the needle, mid seam

Notice to collectors

The ground is not a file somebody drew. It is the output of a generator fed one number, and that number is published before the drop opens, so you can run it yourself and get this exact screen back. The ghoul printed over it is drawn, so the hash of the whole print file is published with the number, and neither half can be quietly tidied up afterwards. When a drop closes the seed is retired and never rendered again. Check that yourself: diff any two drops and catch us reusing one.

Exhibit · twelve on the wall

Nothing unsold is ever sold later. A drop that times out at ninety is a run of ninety, and the rest were never made.

A single keycap floating in a jar of green fluid.

Specimen 04 · the keyboard half, preserved

Care instructions

Wipe with a damp cloth. Do not boil.
If the print looks off register, that is the finish. It is meant to look wrong.
Do not attempt to reprint it. There is nothing to reprint from.
Keep away from other cases, which will only feel ordinary afterwards.

Exhibit · the mob, holding theirs up

Exhibit · the bench, from above

On the tray

Torn scraps and a halftone screen, cut by the number.
Black waxed thread. It is meant to show.
Bolts, because the neck bolts are not optional.
One seed number, and one drawn ghoul.

Exhibit · in the box

A workbench from above: a half-finished case pinned open, loose panels, needles, thread, bolts and a scalpel.

The bench

Scraps, grit, a plate that missed, and one drawing.

Nothing here is a mock-up of a process that does not exist. The ghoul is drawn by hand and he is the only part that is. He is dropped in at a measured origin rather than a nudged one, so what has to clear the camera band clears it on every body we print. Everything under and over him is built by the seed: the ground and the coarse halftone screened across it, torn scraps pasted behind him at hard angles, a second-ink copy of his own outline offset a few pixels so the plate misses, the suture that sews him to the case rather than sticking him on it, and photocopy grit over the lot. Then it is pressed once per unit, as one of 250 pulls, so number 17 was pulled like number 17 and not like a random grain keyed on 17. Feed the same number in tomorrow and the same case comes out, which is the only reason it is safe to publish the number.

In the box

A case, and the keyboard it was born attached to.

One numbered case. One card with the code for its matching keyboard scene, which loads the theme, the press effects, the key sounds and the background picture in one go.

The keyboard is Android. FrankenKeys ships on Google Play and nowhere else, so the card in the box is a card an Android phone can use. The case is made for 24 phones across iPhone and Samsung Galaxy; the keyboard runs on the Galaxy half of that list. If you carry an iPhone you are buying the case, and you should know that before you buy it rather than after.

Case

One, unique

Keyboard scene

On a card, Android

Release date

Not announced

Not yet for sale

Get told when it opens

We said we would not take your address until there was something to sell. There is now.

One email when a drop opens. That is the entire use. No newsletter, no drip sequence, no second email asking why you did not open the first one.

Stored on our own server, not a mailing-list company. We keep your address, the date, and which page you came from. We do not keep your IP, your browser, where you came from, or anything else, and there is no tracking pixel in the email. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe that deletes the record rather than flagging it.

A crate prised open with a crowbar, a patchwork case and a glowing phone packed in straw inside.

Five designs.The list goes first.