Part 1 – The Creative and Design process
Initial Meeting
The creative process begins with the first meeting. In this meeting we generally ask the customer various questions to better understand their business and the products or services they wish to advertise. If we are not familiar with the industry, product, or service we usually ask a lot of questions to get a good idea of what our customer does. This is a key step before the creative stage which helps us create effective vehicle wraps. If we are familiar with the industry or product we will generally ask more product and service specific questions to better understand what makes this particular products different. Understanding what makes the product, service, or company different allows our designers to focus the advertisement on those particular points.
After the initial discussion about the company we focus the meeting to the customers wants and needs. We ask questions such as:
- What is to be advertised? (brand, product, service, etc.).
- How long is the above going to be advertised for?
- Who is the target customer?
- Is there a corporate branding strategy?
- What type of vehicles are going to be wrapped?
- We may go over some wraps we have previous done to find our what a customer like and doesn’t like?
- What type of information is primary and secondary for the viewers to see?
- Are there any guidelines for the vehicle graphics? (do’s and don’ts)
Creative/Design Stage
After the initial meeting our customers may decide to sit with our designer at our office and work on the design together or let our designer work on it alone. During the initial design stage we may come up with anywhere from 1 to 10 initial designs based on the information provided earlier. The number of designs really depends on the 1) how the creative juices are flowing 2) the amount of information given to us 3) the type of industry, product, or service being advertised 4) the amount of creative freedom give to us 5) the type of vehicle being wrapped 6) the coverage of the vehicle. is it a full wrap or just simple decals? Creative isn’t easy. some industries are easier to design for and some are much harder.
Initial Concepts
These initial concept are far from finished and generally are only shown on one side of the vehicle. This is done deliberately to not waste our customers money by wasting design hours. This stage is to get a general idea of what the customer likes and doesn’t like. We generally focus on the overall look of the vehicle wrap and the high level details. The customer may love it or they may like one specific portions of the different options we designed.
Revision stage
We then take all the comments and suggestions and begin revising the graphics. During this stage we usually spend more time on the finer details of the vehicle wrap. This generally including fine adjustments of typography, spacing, balancing, etc. Once the comments and suggestions are incorporated into the new design we again get customers feed back. This particular step can sometimes be repeated several times and sometimes only once.
Final Design
After the the revision stage is complete and the customer is happy with the vehicle wrap or graphics we designed we go back and ensure everything is perfect. In this stage we comb through the design to ensure everything is perfect, replace low resolution graphics with high resolution ones, etc.
Color Matching
When color matching is requested require the customer to come in for color sample printing and approvals. This step can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour depending on the type and number of colors which need to be color matched.
Sign Off and Approvals
When the graphics are complete and the colors matched. The customer signs off on the project and it goes into production.
The production process will be described in Part 2 of the Vehicle Wrap Process Series.
If you have any questions about the series please feel free to give us a call anytime.