By signcraft
Posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2015
It only makes sense that a sign shop should have an effective sign and effective graphics on the shop vehicles. Yet, so often, our own image takes a backseat to getting the work out for our clients. But a vehicle can be a sign shop’s most effective advertising—just as it can be for any small business.
Whether out in traffic, parked on a job site or in front of the shop, a shop vehicle is often in highly visible locations. Why not take advantage of the advertising we so often recommend to clients?
Door lettering, wraps, vintage trucks, soft sell, gold leaf, high impact—there are plenty of approaches to creative shop vehicles. They’re a great way to show your customers how effective vehicle graphics can be. It’s hard to find any other proven advertising medium that delivers such a large number of impressions for such a low cost.
But when you’re busy getting work out the door it can be hard to justify taking the time to do your own signs and graphics. And sometimes we are our own toughest customer—it can be hard to narrow our own ideas down to one that works for our shop truck.
How do you get started designing—or redesigning—your shop vehicles? Start by deciding whether you want a clean, conservative or a bold, high impact look. That will determine how much of the vehicle you want to devote to the signage.
Then try Ken Millar’s guideline of devoting 2/3 of that space for your primary message—pushing the secondary copy back so that nothing steals the thunder of your primary message. That way, whether the approach is big and bold or corporate or laid back, your primary message—your shop name and graphics—will still get the attention it deserves.
Looking for ideas? Want to see how other shops have handled their shop vehicles? You’ll find great-looking shop vehicles in almost every issue of SignCraft Magazine. And soon you’ll be able to search every past issue to see all the shop trucks that have ever been featured in SignCraft since 1980. Stay tuned!
We’d like to see your shop vehicles, too. Send a photo of yours today.
