A vehicle is read in about three seconds by someone who did not ask to read it. The designs that get calls have one trade, one phone number and one web address, big, in a colour that contrasts with the panel. The rear doors carry the number because that is what the driver behind reads at the lights. The sides carry the name and the trade. Everything else, the photos, the strapline, the list of services, is decoration that competes with the number.
That is the brief for a working van. A campaign vehicle for a brand has the opposite brief: it is designed to be photographed and shared, so the whole van becomes the image and the logo can be small. A chauffeur fleet sits between the two, branded enough to be recognised at an airport pickup and subtle enough that the passenger does not feel advertised on. We ask what the vehicle is for before we open the software.
- {01}What you have. A logo on a business card, a full brand guideline, or nothing at all. All three are a starting point. If you have nothing, we will design the logo too.
- {02}What the vehicle is for. Calls, photographs, recognition or a colour you love. That decision drives everything else.
- {03}Panel map. Your vehicle's exact model and year as a flat template, with every handle, rail, rivet and fitting marked, so nothing important lands on them.
- {04}Design direction. One or two routes, on the template, at the scale the design will be seen from. We show you the van from across the road, not the logo at full screen.
- {05}Proof and sign off. Every side of the vehicle proofed. Colour checked against your brand references, and on a printed swatch for fleet standards.
- {06}Print and fit. HP latex on 3M or Avery cast film, laminated, fitted indoors at Caterham, checked panel by panel.
For a single van a design direction usually comes back within a couple of working days of the brief. Fleet livery standards take longer because they have to work across mixed models.
Custom car work splits into two. Colour change wraps in satin, matte, gloss, chrome and colour-flip films from 3M, Avery and Hexis, where the design decision is the finish and how it suits the way you use the car. And printed custom wraps, where the car carries an image: the Shred & Butta camouflage Defender, the rust-effect Fiesta, the Nissan GT-R Gavin Allen brought us as an outline of an idea. Printed car wraps are the hardest job in the unit because the image has to line up across compound curves and every panel edge, and they are the ones people stop us in car parks to ask about.
For a colour change we will talk you through the finishes honestly. Chrome photographs brilliantly and is the hardest colour to sell a car in, so we usually suggest it for accents. Satin black is the most popular colour change we fit for a reason.
A custom van wrap for one tradesperson is a design job. A custom livery for a fleet is a design system. It has to work on a Transit Custom and a Sprinter, on a dropside and a car, with the same rules for where the logo sits, how big the number is and what happens when a panel has a rail through it. We build that as a livery standard on panel maps of the real vehicles, so vehicle fifty is identical to vehicle one and a replacement door is a reprint, not a redesign.
Dexters' estate agency fleet across London branches, Nike's delivery and run-club vans and Bruce's dog daycare vans were all built that way. The N Family Club, Shrubstone and SES vans are single custom designs that came from a logo and a conversation.
- Too much information: six services, two numbers, three social handles and a strapline, none of them readable at forty miles an hour
- Phone number on the side and nothing on the rear, where the only person with time to read it is sitting
- Colours that match the van instead of contrasting with it, so the lettering disappears at dusk
- Photographs printed at business card resolution and stretched across a van side
- Designs built on a generic van outline rather than a panel map, so the logo lands on the door handle
- Cheap calendered film under a good design, lifting at the edges within a year
If your current wrap has one of these, we can usually redesign around the existing colour and replace panels rather than re-wrapping the vehicle.
Questions people ask before they call
Custom vehicle wrap design
Tell us the vehicle and what it's for, and send whatever artwork you have. We'll come back with a design direction on your vehicle's template and a price. 020 8944 6360.
