Heavy Duty Incorporated

I’m ready to put the chocolate and peanut butter together! I’ve been thinking of ways to make wall tiles out of MDF or thin Baltic Birch plywood. The tiles could be various sizes from 12″ or 16″ squares to similar size rectangles, with graphic designs or patterns printed on their faces. They could be attached to a wall with either a mastic or a Velcro-type product if you’re non-committal. You can use tiles individually or in small groups as art, or as a type of “wallpaper.” Once the production process was sorted we could apply a Threadless.com-type model. Don’t get me started on that piece because I’ll never shut up.

Dan Bleier Studio makes tiles like this that are coated with resin and they look pretty sweet. But you’re limited to a handful of designs, and at $110 per square foot with a minimum of 30 SF they’re probably too spendy for most of us.

Board Pusher allows anyone to design graphics for skateboards to make and sell your own custom deck. Whatever production process or manufacturer they’re using for these custom-on-demand boards seems like it would be just the ticket for the wall tiles. I’ve contacted them to see if they will share some info to help a brother out. I’m hoping they’ll get back to me soon because I need all the help I can get.

I’m going blind! Try staring at this stuff for a few days in a row and you’ll know what I mean. We are working on a print that will be used to make 16″ square pillows. The front of the pillow will have one large letter, and the back will have a similar pattern with a tiny anvil in the middle. I’m pretty happy with the way the graphics have turned out. These were made in Illustrator with one part multiple strokes and ten parts each of pain, suffering and tedium. It was worth it!

The letters were manipulated quite a bit to get the stripes distributed nicely. Some of them have clunky corners in spots, but I dig that because too much perfection can be boring. Depending on the letter’s shape it can be difficult to tell where the origin is.

They are already at the printer and we should have the fabric soon. Then, the real work of putting them together begins…

Any questions about how these are being made? Just post a comment.