Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

I’m Ming Thein, cofounder of Horologer MING—one of the very few high-end watch brands in Asia, and probably the only one in SE Asia. Most of the team is based out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and we also have a production facility in Switzerland. I’m responsible for the creative side—that is to say product design, engineering, photography, packaging design, collateral, etc. Unfortunately it is also my name on the dial, as my fellow cofounders insisted that I take responsibility for my children. In my previous life, I was a professional photographer, with adjunct roles as chief of strategy at Hasselblad, advisory board of DJI, and a bunch of stuff with other industry companies. In ancient history, I was in finance.

“Outside work” is a tricky question, as increasingly those things became work—first photography, then watches. I stop there, because I also learned that doing something professionally is very different from doing it as an amateur—you spend more time around the other pragmatic and less enjoyable elements of the business than the actual fun part. Fortunately, I see no way to make eating or cycling into a profession, though I am very far down the rabbit hole of customisation with both of those things—and coincidentally, also how I got into watches.

What hardware do you use?

I assume this is computing hardware —for the heavy lifting, I have one of the last Intel Xeon Mac Pros running a 27” Wacom Cintiq Pro. It has an obscene (224GB) amount of RAM for high-resolution stacking and rendering, and an SSD and NAS stack attached. This is hooked up to a black Moonlander that’s lost its palm rests and some of its feet, has superfluous keys blanked off with plugs I 3D-printed, Kailh Box Navy switches, and Cerakey caps. I love the heavy clicky feel this combination provides.

I actually do most of my work at home, so the office has an M2 MacBook Air and Studio Display, which is connected to a white Voyager. It too has an unusual configuration—the two halves are permanently connected and tented with a 3D-printed base I designed (I want to be able to move it around and keep the perfect orientation and spacing). I removed the bottom covers and screwed both halves of the board directly to the 3D printed base. The caps are CNC aluminium, also of a custom design, with holes in the middle to be able to see the LEDs—these serve as color mnemonics for my modifier, number, and homing keys. Since these caps are also heavy, I changed the switches to the low-profile Kailh Choc Navies. I’m not very good at leaving things stock…once I get into something, I tend to go down the rabbit hole. It also doesn’t help when you have the tools to make exactly what you want…

And what software?

Other than the usual boring browsers and enterprise stuff—most of my life is spent in Photoshop and Onshape. And of course Oryx…without that it’s impossible to make so few keys work.

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

The Moonlander and Voyager layouts are almost identical, but for the addition of an arrow cluster on the right side and dedicated control and option keys on the left. There are a couple of layers, but to be honest the long-press and autoshift functions are so useful I no longer use them. I’d never have thought I could actually make something with so few keys not just work, but work in a really efficient way!

What would be your dream setup?

I’m pretty close, I think. Achievable dreams, unified metal housings for the current boards; I’m a product designer and unashamed about my preferences for tactility and haptics. It’s one of the reasons I landed up with the current keycaps. One step further would be wireless, and with an integrated 3DX six-axis mouse for CAD work and a nice large trackball. I find this much easier for CAD work than a mouse to precisely fix a location with.