Wrapping is a skill as we’d all generally agree. Some designs test that skill more than others though…

Sam’s Detailing, as the name suggests, is a vehicle detailing business which delivers services including forensic-level valeting and even improving on original paint finishes. It’s also a customer that CJ Signs, based in Sheffield, has dealt with in the past. On this occasion, Sam’s Detailing returned with its own van for a livery, and its own ideas in terms of the livery design.

Signs and graphics producers spend a good portion of their time and energies working on supplied designs that are the product of template output, making them fit in the 3D world and on complex surfaces that comprise a typical vehicle. Sam’s job took that involvement and detail to a whole new level.

The design is, it must be said, BRILLIANT. It’s possessed of an incredible amount of detail and it really involves the observer. The eye flys unbidden from one element to another looking for continuity and repeats that aren’t there. The closer you look, the more detail is revealed. In terms of putting design in a class, it’s in one of its own.

Brilliant or not, the design places a huge responsibility on the wrap applicator for accuracy and fit. The design forgives no error. If design elements don’t meet in exactly the right place then the design will just drag the eye straight to it and it’ll look wrong. Panel junctions need to be spot-on. Corners need to agree. Elongation needs to be managed.

Having done the pre-press work and editing, printing appears to have been the easy part. The production team worked with its Roland TruVis VG2 and a roll of MetaCast MDC Premium Wrapping Film to print the job. It was laminated with the matching MGC laminate. 

Application of such a complex and detailed graphic is going to test the best and, it’s a credit to CJ Signs team that the job is every bit as good as it looks. The complexity is there as a grounding for the design, it doesn’t need to disguise errors that simply are not there. Nothing is bent out of shape, or mismatched. It’s a signmakers’ Everest, summited in trainers. A brilliant job. 

In terms of doing the job it needs to do, Sam’s livery nails it and more. It’s going to be remembered and recalled by all who seen it, that’s for sure. It’s also going to be remembered by the skilled team that produced it too. It’s not every day that a real test-piece comes along which exercises every wrapping skill in the book and leaves no room for error.

It deserves and award.