Different Parts of a Vehicle Wrap
When you look at a well done completed vehicle, it’s easy to think it was all one big piece graphic vinyl. After all, the job of a good vehicle wrap installer is to make the image appear without seams and akin to a custom paint job. The fact of the matter is a vehicle wrap before it’s installed, comes in a series of different sections or panels. In training to wrap vehicles you’ll be faced with a kit with all sorts of parts and it’s up to you to fit them together in the best possible way.
The first step one should take is to get the computer mockup of the design to get a visual on what it’s supposed to look like and attempt to paste them up in the closest possible way to the computer graphic version. Be aware that the scale design supplied to you may not exactly represent what is directly in front of you in three dimensions.
Generally in vehicle wrap graphics these are the parts you’ll be supplied with or asked to make with your sign printer: bumpers, driver’s side, passenger’s side, hood/bonnet, roof, trunk or rear and the windows. Many of these panels for your vehicle wrap can be create as a single piece which fits largely over the body panels of the vehicle wrap, while in other instances a certain section is created from tiles.
Tiled vehicle graphics can be described as several overlapping sheets of vehicle wrap graphics that are placed one on top of another to achieve a larger finished image. This is done for different reasons depending on the circumstances of the actual vehicle wrap installation. It may be tiled in order to conserve media by fitting the most panels into a roll vehicle wrap vinyl to avoid waste or it may simply be the driver’s side panel (as an example) is too large to be printed as one solid panel.
When fitting these various vehicle wrap panels together it’s good to consider the overlapping areas and spend your timing getting all the separate parts in the right place to get your installation looking great and as though it were one giant piece. This same time for consideration can be carried over to the design and printing of the vehicle wrap, as it is a series of connecting panels on a three dimensional curved surface – the designer/printer should try to avoid closely connecting graphics between one section to another.