Thursday, May 1, 2008

Thats A Wrap

It seems that the trend of vehicle wraps is finally settling into the Lake Charles area. When traveling to larger cities, you see these things everywhere. You can't take a trip through Houston without seeing at least a few on the interstate. The instant popularity of these lies in the wow factor. When you see a vehicle that is covered in vinyl, you can't help but look at it. In traffic it pulls your eyes instantly and your forced to look and ask "what's that?"

• Wraps VS Billboards

Another big draw on these guys is pricing. While some are more than others, a vehicle wrap is going to run you about the same as three to four months of billboard space, based on some averages here in Lake Charles. So the question is what's a better investment, four months on one street corner with a board? Or three to four years, and it goes where ever you go? Even when you’re not driving it, park it in front of your business during the day to draw extra attention to your store front, or wrap your company's install vehicles for extra advertising every time they go on a job.

• Tips on Design

Luckily I've had the benefit of being involved at the beginning of vehicle wraps coming into the area. So I've had the chance to learn how to effectively design these things at the start of their popularity in Lake Charles. I've learned tons by trial and error and want to share a few things that might help any designer doing their first wrap. Hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes I did, and some I've seen others make. If you’re interested in seeing wraps I've designed, check them out here www.behance.net/shawn



Pre-concept Work - If you’re not a designer at the company that will produce and install the vehicle wrap, then first off, find a quality production company. If you get clients like I do at times, they come in with a grand idea and their own concept for you to start with. When doing your first vehicle wrap, do not commit or tell your client that you can achieve a certain effect or look before talking to a production company. Find out how they install it. If you get the chance to go somewhere and see one being installed, do it! It will change the way you think about your concept. Also, some companies that are more experienced with installing wraps might tell you they can achieve different things based on techniques they have learned.

Another thing to look into that might seem odd, look for a place that installs there wraps indoors. It make a huge difference in how the vinyl is applied, specially how much it stretches. Some production companies have different print capabilities, and different levels of quality for installing. The one thing that can kill your design the fastest is a poor install. So do your research when looking for someone to produce your wrap design, it will pay off in the end.

Also, there is a need to communicate to your client that this is not a paint job for their vehicle, but explain it as a traveling billboard. There are high chances for some imperfections, such as small creases in the vinyl and splicing around some corners.

The techniques, tools, & materials are growing rapidly for the wrap industry, and I have seen some flawless wraps, but I've also seen a lot there are not. When viewed at its proper viewing distance, even just a couple feet away, these imperfections are not even visible. More things to talk to your production company about, see what they can achieve before settling on one.

Two things that I've done and seen people design in wraps, that at first look good on paper, then get destroyed in installation -

1 - Critical design elements that wrap from the side of the vehicle to the rear. These areas are difficult to install, and are also the places that the vinyl is stretched the most. An example of this was a home audio and video company that wrapped there installation van. In their design, they had movie film strips that went around the side of the van, to the back. When the vinyl is printed for wrap, it’s done in panels, so when trying to line up these design elements, after the vinyl has been stretched around the back corner, it’s almost impossible to match it up. Textures and solid colors work best for rounding corners.

2 - Not considering negative space. What will the vinyl not stick to? How accurate is your template? I've seen lots of wraps that the type is visually cut by things that the vinyl wasn't going to stick to. Consider how graphics are going to have to be cut during installation. Again, all things that your production company can tell you.

Think 3D. Any design can look good on paper, but how's it going to work on a vehicle. When the design is wrapped around finders and body lines, how is it going to affect your type and logos? Some areas are unavoidable, while some aren't as bad as you might think, but you have to get your head out of 2D, and think how it’s going to form to the vehicle.




• FILE SIZE


Once you get your concept going, you have to set up your file size. Now... unless you want an extreme exercise in patience, do not set your file up to full size. A lot of people that design for the print industry tend to set files up for large format printing at actual size, and at 300 dpi. Doing this on a vehicle wrap will cause you to certainly dispose of your computer though the closest window you can find. Not only will it frustrate you, but the crew member that has to open your file will want to hunt you down after spending 15 mins or more waiting for your 1.7 gig file to open. Most of my wraps average out to about 500 to 700 mgs. Also staring at a processing bar after a transform in Photoshop for several minutes is enough to drive any designer crazy. Not only are you losing just time in processing these types of changes, but also it throws up a roadblock to your creative flow. If you’re like me, while you’re working on one area of your design, sparks are flying in your head about the other areas, and waiting on your machine to process the things you do, is like pouring water on the creative fire. My suggestion to get a good print, and not over the top file size, is to set up your file at half scale and 150 DPI. You'll still have to wait on processing, it will not be near as long, and more machines out there can handle it better.

If you sell your client on a design that can be done all in vector graphics, then go for it, but most wraps involve high res images and Photoshop work. When designing your wraps in Photoshop, try as much as you can to use vector smart objects from Illustrator. Specially with logos. This helps a ton with being able to resize your elements over and over without losing resolution. Big thanks to Adobe for that added feature. And give yourself lots of bleed, but again, talk to you production company to find out how much, and think in 3D about how much of that bleed will get sucked up in rounding corners.

Unless they ask for it, do not bring your layered file to the production crew. Flatten your design, crop it down with the necessary bleed still there. Then bring them a JPG of the wrap, and a print out of it on the template for the installers to follow. Trust me, they will love you for it!

When designing a wrap keep in mind you have a short read time on these. Keep your designs low on info, and heavy on eye candy. You want to accomplish three things with a wrap,

1. Draw in people’s eyes. You want people to look at it.

2. Who you are. Logo and brand recognition.

3. What you do. This has to be done using minimal type. When people are traveling, there not interested in a list of services or products, they need and want the basics.

If your client pushes for more information try and explain to them that print communications, such as business cards, brochures, and other hand outs, are for people to learn about a company, not their vehicle graphics. I even push for people to not put their phone numbers. It’s one more thing to compete for attention in a already short amount of time. Think about it, how many times have you written down a phone number in traffic, or remembered one that you saw somewhere while driving. I'd be willing to be bet maybe once, if any. Encourage people to put a website vs a phone number. It gives people a easy word association. Which will you remember when you get home after seeing a wrap, Joe's Painting (318) 398-2593 or Joe's Painting www.joespainting.com

• TEMPLATES

Unless you’re a sign company that does wraps, or a vehicle wrap company, you probably don't own vehicle templates. They do come in handy, but never trust them fully. ALWAYS see the vehicle before starting, it’s a must! If your using a pre-made template, get measurements from the actual vehicle, and check it against your template. Once its printed, sizing mistakes are going to cost someone, the client, you, or the production company. And building trust with the production company, that they won’t have to reprint things you send them because of size issue, is a good thing. When they know that your files are easy to open, scale up 2x there size and ready to print, they will love doing business with you.

So... on that note, its tutorial time! How to build your own 1/2 scale Photoshop template for any vehicle. First off we need pictures. A few digital shots of the sides, rear, front, and hood, (on vans, both sides are necessary, you have sliding doors, or panel doors to consider, and some box trucks have different hardware on either side) For the hood, you might need a step ladder. Also, consider your angles when taking the pictures. Get as square to the vehicle as you can, this may take kneeling for taller people, so you don't get a downward angle. And make sure the whole vehicle is in the shot, bumper to bumper.

Now we need some reference measurements. I usually stick with doors, measure the width of the driver or passenger side door, the width of the back door or tailgate, or anything that you can use as a reference point. And the same for the hood.

Let’s say the measurement for your door is 40 inches. Make you a new PS doc at 20 inches wide, at 150 dpi. The height can be whatever you want, I usually do around 50 inches.

Drag our guides from your sides, place one on each side. So now your guides are 20 inches apart.

Now paste in your image on a second layer and start transforming. You will have to zoom out before you start enlarging your image, but your goal is to get the area you measured on the door, to fill up the width of that PS document. So now you should have a file that is skinny, and all you should see is the door, or area you measured.

Now bump up your canvas size, till you see the whole vehicle, then crop it back down so that all you have is your image, with enough bleed of course.

Now trace out all the areas you plan vinyl to go on either with your pin tool, or a marquee tool. I prefer using the pin tool, with it set to paths, not shapes.

Once I get all my area traced, I right click and make it a selection, then I go back and trace out all my negative spaces. Any door handles, or other things that may be cut out. Subtract them from my selection, then cut it out of the image, then paste it back behind everything.

Now you have your template at 1/2 scale. You can design between the layers, and if its a white vehicle, you can put what your cut out on top, and set the layer to multiply, and it can give a look of truly being on the vehicle.

Now once you have it designed, flatten your design layers, remove your template layers, and save, what I call a print file, as a JPG. And bring it to your printer.


Good luck, and have fun!!

2 comments:

Bmanfoust said...

That was a great article. Thank you very much. I do a lot of designing for vehicle wraps and there is very little good information and help on the internet. Keep it up!

Unknown said...

Truly amazing vehicle wraps! Loved all of these and will love to have a full body wrap too which will represent my online business. Have been planning to make a design on my own. Hopefully will get success!