First Amendment Meets Second

Some vehicle wraps require elegant, serifed or script fonts, a cornucopia of whimsical colors, or pictures of shiny, happy people. And then there are those that promote guns. Arizona Color Vehicle Wraps & Graphic Media (Phoenix) executed the design and fabrication of a wrap to tout Desert West Firearms Training, a Phoenix-based facility that offers gun-safety education and shooting training.

Jim McClure, Arizona Color’s CEO, said the shop created the wrap design from scratch using Adobe Photoshop to create the quasi-camouflage backdrop and render various firearm images. He said, “We make our templates to ensure accurate measurements. Prepackaged templates have let
us down too many times.”

The shop fabricated the approximately 300-sq.-ft. wrap on its Mimaki JV3 with Prism inks using 3M’s Controltac media with Comply air-release media. He said, “Air-release media is a godsend that saves us hours on every installation.” 3M’s 8519 luster-finish overlaminate, was applied with a Seal 60-in. laminator. For the windows, the shop printed on Clear Focus Imaging’s JetVue window film.

During the last two years’ economic turbulence, McClure said better salesmanship has been required to make sales. In the future, he predicts the company will wrap more unusual surfaces, such as walls, floors, etc. But, McClure noted, “I still see a lot of blank canvases on the road.”