“Food trucks are a recession-proof industry. Lucky for us, people love to eat,” says Joshua Loring Tolbert, owner of Awthentik Graphics in Lake Elsinore, California. To capitalize on the booming food-truck market, Awthentik has mastered the art of food-truck wraps.
In addition, Tolbert and crew have come up with an intriguing specialized toy mini-wrap to promote its services – and for its clients to promote their own businesses, as well.
“Wrapping little toys is great for marketing and client visualization. Most of the trucks we make we give to our clients as gifts for purchasing a wrap. Some of our clients also purchase them to give to their clients and friends as nice business presents. Anywhere they go, they get attention,” says Tolbert.
To create these mini-masterpieces, Awthentik purchased Custom Creations taco and ice-cream trucks from MegaToys, a toy manufacturer and wholesaler. The toy trucks’ original graphics were then removed using isopropyl alcohol to eliminate excess adhesive and promote good adhesion of the new graphics.
The in-house Awthentik design team developed a template equipped with overlay and fully labeled print-and-cut lines precisely measured to fit the taco truck. (Awthentik offers the mini-truck templates on the shop’s blog free of charge: loringstudios.com/design-and-graphics-blog.)
Then, using the shop’s Roland SolJet Pro XC-540 printer-cutter with Versaworks RIP, the miniature wraps were output onto Oracal OraJet 3165RA calendered PVC film, and an Oracal 210 matte laminate added. “What’s great about these wraps is that it takes only about one or two feet of media to complete and less than 30 minutes to print, laminate, and cut,” Tolbert explains.
“Creating the print-and-cut template was the most difficult part. It took us a couple of tries to get it just right. We took photos and measurements of the truck and created our first print-and-cut file. After a couple of test prints, we had a valuable template that fit the toy with little effort. Once that was made, the rest was a wrap.”
Prior to installation, a bit of disassembly was required. “Rather then create a template that would cut around the roof vents, we made a pattern that cuts right around the holes in the roof. The downfall is that you need to remove eight little screws in order to take off the roof vents,” explains Tolbert. The body lines in the template, matching the existing body lines of the truck, were then squeegeed down with a sponge.
Awthentik Graphics
www.awthentikgraphics.com