Fish Out of Water

When a client walks into your shop and asks for a huge crappie wrap, you better not make it crappy. [Sorry, we had to.] Fish-themed graphics promote the customer’s involvement in Crappie USA and the American Crappie Association, which organizes tournaments and encourages anglers of that freshwater species.

Digital EFX Wraps installed graphics for two trailers and two matching pickup trucks, plus the shop provided die-cut decals, , backdrop event signage, and boat graphic kits for vessels given away at fishing tournaments. Incorporating the client’s logo and crappie images, Matt Richart, co-owner of the Louisville, Kentucky-based vehicle wrap shop, says he designed the graphics for the vinyl so the trailer and truck complemented each other, but also looked good independently. The design process, including client approvals (and reworking a wonky fish eyeball in Photoshop), spanned about five days.   

It took 596 square feet of film to create the graphics for the trailer and 190 for the truck. The job was printed on a Roland XR-640 Soljet Pro 4 on Avery Dennison MPI 1105 EZ RS with DOL 1060Z cast gloss laminate.  

Two installers meticulously prepped the surfaces and spent a total of six hours wrapping the truck, in addition to a day and a half wrapping the trailer. “Prep time is the most important part, so even though the truck and trailer were brand new, we spent a fair amount of time detailing these,” Richart says. “We wanted to make sure all the surface area was prepped correctly so that our installation and film would last.”

from Big Picture's October issue or explore more vinyl wrap tips from the pros at Digital EFX Wraps.