“1QA Words” is Taiwanese cultural words born from the keyboard. It’s similar to Morse code that was created for text encryption. Under the circumstances of being unfamiliar with Chinese, users need to decode it through the Mandarin Phonetic keyboard. Its real-life application makes decoding fun to life!

In Taiwan, the pronunciation of Chinese is composed of Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, which is a common input method for Taiwanese to type Chinese. However, Taiwanese people often forget to switch between Mandarin and English input methods and type out a long series of English codes combined with numbers, such as 好ok (CL3), 嗨hi (C9), 幹fuck (E04), etc. Over time, these codes become recognizable even in untranslated coding forms as if it’s a new word on the Internet! In fact, “1QA Words” has always existed in our lives, we just do not realize it.

Based on the combination of Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, we redesigned and created 1341 “1QA Words”. The design of each European font uses a slightly concave curvature of the keycaps to symbolize the text produced by typing from the keyboard. By turning the design into tangible merchandise, we hope to draw people’s attention to the “1QA Words” so that the world can understand the keyboard and Mandarin Phonetic culture used in Taiwan.