Designing Your Vehicle Wrap from Start to Finish
We love the magic of taking your ideas and then delivering something that knocks your socks off. But there are so many steps (and steps within steps!) to get from start to finish that we thought we’d give you a bit of a look-in to our process.
Ring Ring
A lot of our projects start with a phone call or an email. One of our satisfied clients has told someone they know about us (aw shucks) and you tell us you’re interested in getting a wrap for your vehicle.
We think that’s a great idea but before we can even get into the fun creative stuff we have to ask you some basic questions. We need the following vehicle info:
Make
Model
Year
Cab size
Bed length
Color
Color is a key issue if we are doing a color change. The wrap is going to completely cover your original paint color, but the original color will still be visible whenever you open and close the vehicle doors and in between the seams of the body panels. You’ll get better results if you’re doing a dark wrap on a dark vehicle and a light wrap on a light vehicle. It’s also worth noting that some vehicles have parts that are not possible to effectively wrap such as some hinges or door handles.
We have constantly updated special software that has templates in place for all the vehicles you can imagine (since 2002), but we still need pictures of all sides of your vehicle. We need these for design and installation purposes. Many people haven’t made any modifications to their vehicles, but items like fender flares, body lines, and bumper modifications will change how we design and install your wrap.
Size Matters
You need to decide whether you want to do spot graphics, a partial wrap, or a full wrap. Your decision affects material cost and design time. As a general rule, we can put together spot graphics in 1-2 hours, a partial wrap in 4-5 hours, and full wraps 8+ hours.
The decision you make for one vehicle should be considered in the context of what you have planned for your fleet, whatever size that fleet might be.
A great example of a 1/2 wrap!
File Formats Matter Too
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you aren’t real nerdy about the file formats of your graphics. “Can you use a jpeg?” is something we hear a lot, but we’ll save time and tell you now, No.
We’re not mad! You just have to understand that the reason why JPEGs are so popular and why almost everyone is familiar with them is because they are ideal for web images that need to be downloaded quickly. They also work well for editing and printing.
Where they don’t help us, however, is a lack of layers. JPEG files are flat, but we are designing something for a three-dimensional surface, so we need access to files that can be manipulated and modified easily. The file extensions you are going to want end in .eps, .ai, .svg, .pdf, etc. If you don’t have those files for whatever reason, no worries! We can vectorize whatever you have for you and we will add it to the cost of your design.
No Logo? No Problem!
Another reason our clients might not have the right file formats is not having a logo in the first place. Secret: We LOVE designing logos. No, seriously we do. In fact if you mention to one of our designers that we are going to be designing a logo she will sometimes do a happy dance. It’s worth watching. Check our Instagram stories in case we manage to catch her. We have logo design packages to meet every need and budget.
Bottom Line
So now that you’ve given us a call, given us all your vehicle info, taken some pictures for us, gotten us the proper design files or asked us to do that for you, we give all that info to a design manager and numbers get crunched. We get back to you with an estimate of the cost and a delivery timeline.
Design!
Once you sign off on the estimate we get to the fun stuff: DESIGNING! As much as we love being creative, we already know what we like to do. What gets us excited is bringing a client’s vision to life, especially when that client might not have any idea of what’s possible. Some things you’ll want to be thinking about in this part of the process:
What’s your vision? What is it that we want to accomplish? Do we want to raise awareness? Get leads?
What’s inspiring you? Many clients come to us with images of wraps they have seen and let us know what they like and don’t like. The more inspiration you can gather, the better direction we have, and the lower your design costs can end up being.
What are your must-haves? Do you want your logo, contact info, certain colors or patterns? Remember that less is more: we have to think about what information and color scheme makes the most sense for what you’re trying to accomplish.
What are your can’t haves? This is the perfect time to list out pet peeves you’ve seen on other wrapped vehicles before.
Revisions
We will be working on something that is 1/20th the size of your vehicle (our computers are big, but not that big) and will send you 2-3 concepts. We will then need your feedback: what do you like and not like? No need to worry about our feelings! We know that you will like some and dislike others, or may like all of them...the point is to take an initial stab to see where you want to continue going.
Most projects typically have 2-3 rounds of revisions before a final design so don’t worry if it’s not exactly what you want on the first go-around. This is a process and it’s fun, not just something you need to get out of the way. It’s a major investment for you and it should be thoughtful, not rushed.
When revisions are done we will go for final design approval and once we have that we’re ready to start prepping your vehicle.
Prep
Depending on what you’ve chosen to do, we will need to print prep your vehicle’s graphics. This can be consuming depending on how complex your wrap is, which is why we include it in your initial design quote.
While that’s going on our designers create a mockup that also contains any important install details.
Production and Installation
Our production and installation team will want their own article talking about this stage of the process so for now, we’ll simply say that the graphics need to be printed and installed by our very capable 3M certified installers.
We turn the vehicle back over to you and you start turning heads!
Have an idea for a wrap or don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered.