It's been an interesting project so far. I'll probably write about the whole process once i'm done as someone who was new to this stuff. The community here and in adjacent Lemmy communities is kind and helpful.

I'll just say that i started by drawing up a design for what the final board could look like in Inkscape. I started with squares for each key that all looked about the size of a keycap.

If i were to do this again i'd definitely do some stuff differently. I still think Inkscape is a good place to start (or GIMP, or a pencil and paper. Whatever you like to use for drawing.), but some parts would have been easier if i'd made the keys there actual size. That was before i knew how to set Inkscape's scale to match my monitor, so that 1cm in the program at 100% zoom is 1cm on my screen. If i'd done that i think i could have imported the drawing into KiCad as a reference.

I also think i'd use a different CAD program. I didn't know of any when i started this besides KiCad but it has been quite frustrating to work with. I had to reinstall it in version 7 instead of using the current v9 because so much stuff just doesn't work or doesn't work easily in newer versions.