Patterned Covers for Square Office Shelves: Workplace Aesthetic Upgrade on a Budget

In this tutorial, we show you how to fabricate patterned panels for your square office shelves using 3d-printed frames and laser-cut foamcore panels. Create lovely patterns from simple elements and demonstrate your enthusiasm for math and modern art, while hiding your clutter from studio visitors!

THE PROBLEM

The half-dozen IKEA shelves stuffed with organized crap gives our design studio more of a warehouse or hardware store aesthetic. We want to enjoy, and we want our project partners and studio visitors to experience, what Timothy Leary called "friendly vibrations". But it's really convenient to be able to quickly find odd bits of gear! And as a nonprofit, we don't have a budget for fancy commercial art!

THE SOLUTION

After some experimentation, we found an easy process for fabricating patterned foamcore panels in 3d-printed frames that press-fit into the square fronts of the IKEA KALLAX shelves. The result has been an instant aesthetic upgrade--and yet it's still relatively easy to get to the stuff on the shelves.

In this Instructable, we're sharing the design files for the frames and the patterns, along with instructions for assembly. Consider our recommended patterns as a starting point for your own design studio, workshop, classroom or makerspace!

TOOLS

1. a 3d-printer with a bed that is at least 340mm (13.4") square, to print the frames
2. a color or black-and-white printer, to print the patterns
3. a laser cutter OR a letter-sized paper-trimmer OR a ruler and an Exacto blade or sharp snap-off utility knife, to cut the foamcore panels and trim the printer paper sheets.
4. a plastic decal squeegee aka hand applicator, for spreading the printed paper evenly onto adhesive-covered foamcore panels

MATERIALS

1. black PETG filament, for printing the frames
2. foamcore board (3/16" or 4.7mm thick), as the base of the printed panels
3. printer paper (any cheap stuff will do), for printing the patterns
4. 3M Super77 or equivalent spray adhesive, for attaching printed paper to the foamcore panels
5. OPTIONAL: tape (blue painters tape or gaff tape), to secure foamcore panels inside PETG frame

In the PrusaSlicer v2.8.1 settings for the Prusa XL printer, turn off the wiper tower (via Print Settings > Multiple Extruders > Wipe Tower and uncheck "enable").

Load the STL file, and orient the part such that the "feet" are pointing up.

Print settings:

1. PETG filament
2. 0.2mm layer height
3. 20% infill
4. no supports

Print time on Prusa XL: 1h15m

Notes on the frame design: we're assuming a nozzle diameter of 0.6mm (standard for the Prusa XL). We designed the frame crossbars and borders to be exactly four nozzle-diameters wide. The wide foot is designed to be a press-fit in the IKEA KALLAX shelf. There is an tab on either side of the frame that is six nozzle diameters wide (3.6mm), which is intended to keep the frame flush with the front face of the shelf.

There are little triangular overhangs in every inside corner of the frame, to keep the foamcore panels in place. Your printer shouldn't have a problem bridging such a small overhang, but check the slicer settings and experiment if necessary.

Attached is the STL file, and the Fusion CAD file if you want to make edits.

The IKEA KALLAX cubes are 335mm (13.2" or 13 3/16 inch) square. After some experimentation with adjusting the panel size to accommodate the laser kerf, we settled on a panel size of 164mm (6.4567") square.

Our Epilog Legend 36EXT 60W laser has a 24"x36" (609 x 914mm) bed. We are able to get fifteen square panels from a single 24"x36" sheet of foamcore board.

If you don't have a laser cutter, you can cut the foam panels out using an exacto knife, or a sharp snap-off blade and a ruler.

Attached is the foamcore cutout design file in Illustrator and PDF format.

Designing patterns was the most fun part of the project. Our first set of patterns used truchet tiles, simple patterns that aren't rotationally symmetric. According to Wikipedia, "Truchet tiles were first described in a 1704 memoir by Sébastien Truchet entitled 'Mémoire sur les combinaisons', and were popularized in 1987 by Cyril Stanley Smith." See below for a link to the 1987 Smith paper.

As you can see in the images, simply rotating one or two tiles creates surprisingly different effects. You can create very boring repeated and symmetrical patterns, or you can create random patterns that look like freaky blobs. The trick, we learned, is that your choice of color for the first corner creates a requirement for the rest of the pattern, if you want to avoid discontinuities. Go nuts and experiment!

>> Smith, Cyril Stanley and Pauline Boucher. "The Tiling Patterns of Sebastien Truchet and the Topology of Structural Hierarchy." Leonardo, vol. 20 no. 4, 1987, p. 373-385. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/600574

Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (1928-2007) was an American artist who experimented with conceptual art. We based two of our patterns on two LeWitt murals you can see at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA): Drawing 413 and Drawing 414.

In the early 1980s, Sol LeWitt began to use India ink and colored ink washes, which are applied to walls with soft rags, a technique that creates jewel-tone colors and gives the works a fresco-like quality. LeWitt frequently applied the same systems to this new medium that he had used when working with pencil. He assigned gray, yellow, red, and blue ink washes to stand in for the four basic types of line; gray ink wash took the place of vertical lines, yellow replaced horizontal, red replaced diagonal left to right lines, and blue was used for diagonal right to left.

In Wall Drawing 413, LeWitt executed his Drawing Series IV using ink. Between 1969 and 1970, he created four drawing series on paper. In each series he applied a different system of change to each of twenty-four possible combinations of a square divided into four equal parts, each containing one of the four basic types of lines LeWitt used. The result is four possible permutations for each of the twenty-four original units, which are presented in a grid of twenty-four sets of four squares, each divided into four equal parts. In Drawing Series IV, LeWitt used the "Cross Reverse" method of change, in which the parts of each of the original units are crossed and reversed. When drawn on the wall in ink, the irregular, colorful patterns made by these permutations become boldly evident. At MASS MoCA, Wall Drawing 413 is displayed across from Wall Drawing 414, a gray iteration of the same drawing series.

Sol LeWitt has lots of other pattern-based art that can serve as an inspiration.

We saw Modern Groove's "glitch quilt" pattern on Reddit, and it makes a suitably weird visual effect mounted on an IKEA shelf.

You might explore the work of visual artists like Tobias Rehberger for more trippy pattern inspiration.

We printed the pattern art using our laser printer, and we cut out the squares using our laser cutter. We used reference marks on the printed pages to set the zero on the laser, and we experimented with the laser power and speed settings until we could cut through a stack of four printouts without burning the pages.

If you don't have a laser cutter, you can quickly cut the panels using a paper-trimmer, or an exacto knife, or a sharp snap-off blade and a ruler. Either way, make sure you recycle all the leftover paper margins!

We found it easiest to spray the foamcore with the Super77 adhesive, and then mount the paper on top. With practice, you'll get better at aligning the edges of the paper and the foamcore. It's important to use a squeegee (or just a credit card) to flatten the paper and squeeze out all the air bubbles before setting the panel aside to dry. Some paper panels may still develop wrinkles, but this is DIY art not an OCD therapy session.

The foamcore panels should press-fit into the 3d-printed frames--from the front. We found it useful to fix the foamcore into the frames with strips of gaff or painter's tape on the back of the panels. Painters tape is much easier to remove, if you decide to rotate the panels as you seek the perfect truchet tile pattern (this can become habit-forming).

The frames themselves should be a press-fit into the faces of the IKEA KALLAX shelves.

And thus you have created a modern art refuge from which you can plan your next design adventure!

For extra pattern madness, you can order remaindered carpet sections from Flor for $1-3 each. You are guaranteed to get at least one tile the color of baby puke!

Flat-pack IKEA KALLAX shelving units, combined with a label maker and dozens of Sterilite fifteen-quart latching tubs, have solved the gear storage problem at Design that Matters (DtM). Two Sterilite tubs stack perfectly in one KALLAX shelf-cube. The tubs are big enough to fit all kinds of stuff, but small enough that individual tubs are easy to lift and carry. The fact that each IKEA shelf-cube only fits two tubs solves the problem of the tub you want being buried at the bottom of a giant stack.

This setup is the best way we've found to store the studio's mountains of miscellany: computer cables and peripherals, a dozen varieties of tape, a million blank post-it notes and Sharpie pens, fancy Japanese stationery, spools of paracord and nylon webbing, sewing supplies, spare parts for the espresso machine, an archive of field notebooks, camera batteries, ancient miniDV footage.

To make the shelves mobile without being tippy, we screw the 2x4 shelves onto three sets of IKEA wheels, and we ratchet-strap the 4x4 and 5x5 shelves onto two or three heavy-duty wheeled furniture dollies.