Raiden Shogun looks like an easy character to design around until the whole keyboard turns purple.
That’s the problem.
Purple is such a strong part of her visual identity that it’s tempting to use it everywhere: alphas, modifiers, accents, case, deskmat, lighting. But once every surface is doing the same thing, the design stops having any hierarchy.
So when we work on Raiden Shogun-inspired keycaps at AiheyStudio, the challenge isn’t finding the right purple. It’s deciding where purple should stop.
One purple is never enough
Our Raiden Shogun PBT Keycap Set uses purple as the main language, but not as one flat block of color.
We like using different depths of purple because they give the board structure. Darker keys can anchor the layout. Lighter purple can carry the softer areas. Small bright accents can stay special instead of becoming background noise.
Purple needs somewhere to rest
This is the part that matters most.
If every key is saturated, the eye has nowhere to stop. Neutral space, darker borders and quieter legends are what make the purple areas feel stronger.
It’s the same reason a lightning effect looks more dramatic against a dark sky than against another bright light.
Symbols work better when they don’t all compete
Raiden Shogun gives us plenty of visual material: Electro motifs, weapon references, Inazuma-inspired patterns, character details and stronger novelty graphics.
But a full keyboard doesn’t need every reference at the same volume.
We’d rather let a few larger keys carry the obvious theme while the rest of the set supports it through color and smaller symbols. Otherwise the board starts looking like a character reference sheet instead of a keyboard.
Raiden and Yae Miko can share a palette without becoming the same design
Our Raiden Shogun and Yae Miko Keycap Set gave us a different problem.
Both characters can live comfortably around purple, pink and Inazuma-inspired details, but they shouldn’t collapse into one blended color scheme.
The shared palette is useful because it keeps the set cohesive. The character-specific accents are what stop it from feeling generic.
This is a good example of something we run into a lot with multi-character designs: shared color creates unity, but the small differences are what preserve identity.
Pairing characters means giving each one enough space
Two characters don’t automatically need twice as many novelty keys.
Sometimes the better solution is to divide the visual roles. One side can feel darker and more controlled. Another can lean softer or warmer. A few character-specific keys do the rest.
The goal is not to split the keyboard exactly in half. It’s to make sure neither character disappears into the other.
A purple case changes the whole balance
Things get even more interesting when the keyboard case itself is purple.
Our Raiden Shogun 75% Aluminum Keyboard pairs the keycap set with a purple anodized aluminum D75 case.
Once the case joins the color story, the keycaps have to work harder to create separation.
If the case, modifiers and alphas all use nearly the same purple, the entire keyboard can turn into one large color block. That’s when lighter keys, darker accents and different surface tones become much more important.
The case is part of the design whether we planned for it or not
This is why we like testing themed keycaps on a complete keyboard.
A keycap layout can look balanced on a flat design sheet, then feel completely different once a colored case surrounds it. The case acts like a frame, and sometimes that frame is louder than the artwork.
With Raiden, that matters more than usual because purple is already doing so much of the identity work.
The deskmat is where purple can spread out
A keyboard needs contrast because every key sits close to the next one. A deskmat has much more room.
That means the Raiden Shogun Deskmat can carry a broader purple composition without making the setup feel as compressed.
We think of the deskmat as the place where the atmosphere can get wider, while the keyboard still has to stay organized enough to type on every day.
The strongest Raiden design usually uses less purple than expected
This sounds backwards, but it’s usually true.
The more important a color is to a character, the more carefully we have to use it. If everything is purple, purple stops being an accent, a signal or a focal point. It just becomes the background.
So the design process is really about creating layers: dark purple, soft purple, neutral space, a few stronger symbols and enough contrast for all of them to matter.
That’s what makes a Raiden Shogun keycap set feel intentional instead of simply purple.
See our current Genshin Impact designs
Our Genshin Impact collection includes Raiden Shogun, Yae Miko, Klee, Hu Tao, Nahida, Ganyu, Furina and other character-inspired keycap designs.
Raiden is only the beginning. Every character gives us a different problem to solve, which is exactly why this series is going to be fun to keep working on.
More Genshin design notes
This is part of our character-by-character Genshin design series. Continue with Yae Miko and why the set took three versions, Klee and the problem with too much red, Hu Tao and symbol-driven keycap design, Nahida and lighter layouts, and Furina and her three-revision design process.
Layout coverage changes where the artwork can live
A themed set is not finished when the 60% layout looks good. Our Raiden Shogun set includes enough keys to cover a wide range of layouts, and that creates a less glamorous design problem: the theme still has to make sense when someone moves from 61 keys to 68, 75%, TKL, 96% or full-size.
That means we cannot put every important reference on one unusual key size. A design that only works when a certain right Shift or bottom-row modifier is present becomes frustrating very quickly. We try to spread the strongest visual cues across several common positions so a smaller board still feels complete and a larger board does not look like it received all the leftovers.
Extra keys should feel like part of the set, not spare parts
Compatibility keys are easy to treat as an afterthought. We do not like that approach. When someone opens a large keycap set, the alternate modifiers and extra sizes should still belong to the same color system and visual language. On a character theme as color-driven as Raiden, one mismatched purple can stand out immediately.
RGB can help the theme — or make the purple problem worse
The complete Raiden Shogun D75 keyboard also reminded us that lighting has to be judged with the physical board, not just imagined on a design file.
Purple case, purple keycaps and purple RGB sounds logical. In practice, that can remove all the contrast we worked to build into the keycap set. A cooler white, softer violet or restrained lighting effect can sometimes show the keycap colors better than simply matching everything.
We do not think a themed keyboard has to make every component repeat the same color. Sometimes the best match is a little contrast.
Raiden became a useful reference point for later Genshin designs
Once we had worked through this set, we started noticing the same color problem in other characters. Klee has red. Yae Miko has pink. Nahida has pale green and white. Each one has an obvious color that can become too dominant if we let it.
Raiden made that lesson very clear for us: the color people recognize first should not automatically be the color we use most.
For the bigger story behind these designs, read how Genshin fans helped AiheyStudio grow from 0 to 1.