Car Wraps – Essential Design Tips for Business Owners

You've probably seen one of those vehicles wrapped with bold and colourful branding while you’re driving on your way to work, or while with your family on a road trip.

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about how you’d like to promote your business through the use of car wraps, too. Car wraps might be the secret tool missing from your marketing arsenal. This advertisement tool works best in densely-populated areas.

Just a few rounds, and you can get an incredible amount of views that can push potential buyers to check out your products or services.

What are car wraps?

Think of car or vehicle wraps as mobile billboards used to promote a product or service. The critical difference is that with car wraps, the advertisements are moving everywhere the vehicle goes. This means that you are going to reach more potential customers compared to a conventional billboard, which is stationary.

Car wraps are made from vinyl — the material where your branding and advertisements are printed on. Professionals who specialise in car wraps use graphic design software to turn your vision into a mobile billboard before the vinyl is applied to your vehicle.

You will then have the option to choose whether the vehicle will be fully or partially wrapped. In a full wrap, the windows are also covered. In this case, there is no need to worry about road visibility at all.

Tips for designing the wraps

In order to get your message across to the broadest possible number of potential customers, it is necessary to put a lot of thought and effort toward the design of your signage.

But for many business owners, the design process can be overwhelming. It doesn't help that the process involves both aesthetic and technical considerations.

In order to help you overcome some of the most common design stumbling blocks and mistakes, here are a few helpful tips that can get you started.

Consider the vehicle

The silhouette of the vehicle can influence the layout of the design. As such, you might want to match the vehicle with the message that you want to send across.

If the message you have composed is about youthful energy, a sports car would be the ideal fit. On the other hand, if you want customers to see your business as being dependable, you might want to choose a vehicle with more heft, such as a van or ute.

Measure your vehicle

Before beginning the design process, you should first get the measurements of the vehicle, which will be wrapped. Specifically, you should measure the sides, roof, bonnet, rear, and bumpers.

To help you with the measurements, it is a good idea to take pictures of each side, preferably in a direct angle instead of taking the images from a side or upward/downward angle.

Compose your brand message

A car wrap is a useful tool for conveying your brand message. That is, if you pay attention to the visual elements like colours and fonts as well as the written message.

There is no need to use overly long marketing copy. In fact, writing long copy can undermine your efforts because it can crowd the graphics and other elements. Plus, your target customers are inside moving vehicles, so crowding too much text can make it hard for them to read your ad. Keep your message short and direct to the point.

Scope out the competition

Due to the effectiveness of vehicle wraps, it is highly likely that you have at least one competitor that has already taken advantage of the platform.

You can get a leg up over the competition by checking their design concept and seeing what works and what doesn't. During the design stage, you can give your input to the designer regarding these to help you make a wrap that garners more attention.

Opt for bright colours and bold fonts

Your goal is to attract the most number of eyeballs. And one of the easiest ways to achieve that is to use bright colours.

In choosing which colours to use, remember that each hue has a corresponding meaning and appeal to a specific emotion. Ideally, your chosen colour should also be related to your brand identity or logo.

For the fonts, go as big as possible. You would want the message on your wraps to be seen from as far away as possible, especially when your target customers are inside moving vehicles.

Go big and bold

Another way to garner attention is to go big and bold with your design. This can be done by covering as much of the vehicle as possible.

The designer should also find the right balance between creating a large graphic while keeping enough white space to prevent overcrowding.

Going big and bold also means using the most prominent images and letterings that the available space can accommodate.

Keep your message clear

Ideally, your company name should be sufficient to tell the audience what products or services you are offering.

However, if your business name is not well-known, or isn’t descriptive of the business you do, you can add a few elements that will help tell your audience what your business is all about. For example, you can list the essential products or services that you want to highlight and promote.

Adding a few graphics can also help inform your audience better.

Double-check the design

From the graphics to the text, you have to make sure that everything works cohesively. But more importantly, you have to double-check everything so that you are sending the message that you want to send across, and not make some inadvertent mistake that you forgot to check.

Look at the design from different angles before giving the printer the go signal to proceed with the production of the car wrap. As the adage goes, measure twice cut once.

The success of your campaign to use car wraps to promote your business begins with the right design. Do not rush into the process. Otherwise, you can end up with a costly mistake that can hurt your reputation; or, at the very least, can lead you to lose real money on vehicle wrap design and printing expenses.

After the design, the next most critical ingredient for the success of your campaign is finding the right professionals to do the vehicle wrap for you. Choose specialists that have the experience and expertise to turn your concepts into winning advertisements.

AUTHOR BIO

Brian Dwyer is the Director and owner of Colour Source Signwriters, a graphic production business specializing in various vehicle wraps, fleet signs and building signs. The company has been producing professional signage that captures the attention and matches the vision of delighted clients all over Australia since 1990.