Gloucester based Smuj Creative is an enterprise whose team knows its way around Metamark’s M7 SignVinyl swatch. That’s something clients appreciate…

Producing signage and graphics and making livery for vehicles typically involves printing a white, digital material these days. That said, colour can still speak for itself and, coloured SignVinyl in the hands of creatives who appreciate it and know how to work with it, speaks even louder still. 

Smuj Creative is based in Gloucester and is what you might call, without fear of contradiction, an exponent of coloured films. Many jobs that come the way of Sophie Jefferies and the team start as nothing more than a scintilla of direction from a client and end up as works of signmakers’ art. The common threads are legibility, a balance they inherit from someone with an eye for type, and potent, advertisers colours.

Smuj turns often to the Metamark M7 Coloured SignVinyl swatch for inspiration and to Metamark to supply the needed material. “There’s something about coloured materials,” says Sophie Jefferies, “that printed digital media can’t quite reproduce yet. Some colour or quality that’s baked into coloured material give it a presence and super-saturation ink can’t manage.”

One of Smuj Creative’s customers got to experience the difference at first hand recently. The customer came back to Smuj having had a previously liveried vehicle from the Smuj team meet with an accident. Deciding to give the new van the Smuj treatment, the client decided to push the boat out again - just a little further.

Most of the work that Smuj undertakes involves a customised design and so it was with Yew Tree’s new vehicle. It benefits from panel inlays, cut and applied lettering and swathes of geometric colour. It’s quite a piece of work and it took some planning. 

If the design could be said to be crisp, application of the Metamark M7 elements is a stage beyond that. It’s beautifully applied. Not a squeegee mark in evidence anywhere and the panel work is a perfect fit too. The panels were cut on the vehicle by the Smuj team using Knifeless Tape from Metamark. No blades went anywhere near paint.

Nobody likes to lose a van in a bump but the new vehicle wearing its stunning Smuj Creative graphics goes some way toward compensating. The vehicle has presence and just radiates professionalism and quality. The client’s delighted and so’s the team at Smuj Creative. After all, if you’re going to make colour a feature of a design, why not make sure it’s given its voice. Coloured material will do that.