There are a lot of vehicles graphics on the road and there are a lot of vehicle graphic design mistakes. You can’t drive down the street without seeing several. Unfortunately, there are a lot of poorly designed vehicle graphics on the road. Some are poor because they don’t do their job—advertise, but the worst wraps have vehicle graphic design mistakes that send a negative message about the organization they represent.

4 Vehicle Graphic Design Mistakes to Avoid

  1. Not Designed to Vehicle Specifications

There are 10 or more versions of most vehicles. For example, a pickup truck isn’t just a pickup truck it could be short cab, long cab, club cab, crew cab, short bed, or long bed, and each has a different set of specifications. And this doesn’t take into consideration add-on equipment and modifications. Designing a vehicle wrap for a standard cab and learning it’s a crew cab can add expense to the production or force applicators to “make” the wrap “fit” the cab. The best strategy to avoid this is to make certain the design team has all the vehicle information including VIN and photos of the vehicle from all sides.

      2. Losing the Message

We see this all the time. There are a number of causes for lost messages and sometimes they’re combined.

  • Too much going on – If the design is too busy, too much color, too many images, and too many words, the message will be lost in confusion.
  • The wrong fonts – Your message must be easy to read. If the font is too small or difficult to read, such as italics, the message will not be sent.
  • Poor contrast – Blue on black may look pretty but if it’s words on a background it can’t be read. Be sure the background and message highly contrast.
  • Multiple messages – You have three to five seconds to get your message out. That’s not enough time to list every product and service you offer. What’s your primary message?
  • No product image – With the best designs consumers know what the product is before they read the words. Show them what you do.

     3. Stoopid Mistakes

This happens more than people think. Designers aren’t copy editors—they’re designers and although no designer would purposely misspell a word or omit a number—it happens. It happens because customers submit copy with errors, and then only take a cursory look at the final layout. For example, I’ve seen a phone number missing one number, “your” used instead of “you’re” and all kinds of misspellings and that’s only on my short commute! What have you seen?

    4. Not Taking Installation into Account

Using the wrong material for the job is a common mistake. For example, if there are complex curves to be wrapped a compliant adhesive vinyl will be required. If a less compliant material is used, it will stretch and deform.

When the installation team doesn’t have meticulous layouts to refer to they have to guess where the graphics go, and that can be a disaster.

What’s the Answer?

The answer is to find a reliable vehicle graphic design team. I hope you noticed I didn’t say graphic design team, but vehicle graphic design team. There’s a difference. Who should design your vehicle wrap? If you want to avoid vehicle graphic design mistakes use a qualified vehicle graphic designer. If you have any questions or need a design team that has specialized in vehicle graphics for more than 30 years contact us, we’ll drive your message home.

TKO Graphix has been a national fleet and vehicle graphics company helping customers since 1985. We provide full-service graphic design, digital printing, screen printing, graphics installation, and removal of large format graphics.

We’ve been helping businesses, large and small, brand their fleet of tractor-trailers, service trucks, and company vehicles for more than 35 years.

Whether you have a fleet of thousands or a few vehicles, we are here to lead you through the vehicle branding process. We’ve been helping businesses, large and small, brand their fleet of tractor-trailers, work trucks, and company vehicles for more than 35 years.

TKO Graphix is a Certified 3M™ MCS™ Warranty graphics manufacturer. Our installation crews are 3M Certified and are employees of TKO Graphix, not sub-contractors.