Sign Design Tips That Will Entice Clients to Spend More Money

VALUING SIGN DESIGNS and charging for design time have been hot topics recently (see ST, September 2021, page 50), so this month we’ve turned to Adam Sumner, owner of Wrapix Imaging (Burbank, CA) for tips on the design stage of the job. In addition to running his company, Adam is a 3M Preferred Installer, 3M Authorized Trainer and Tester.

Quick Comps

“Our goal when working with customers is to get some designs in front of them as soon as possible after meeting with them and discussing colors, style and obtaining their assets,” Adam wrote. “We try to have three quick comps together in two hours or less.” Wrapix Imaging sends customers three options showing increasing levels of coverage:

First is a spot-graphic design that simply adds their logo and contact info, such as web address and phone number.

Second comes with a partial wrap using “pretty much the same layout as the spot graphics — just adding some background,” Adam wrote.

Third goes for the full wrap. “This is where we show the impact that full coverage has over the first two comps,” he continued.

Doing this not only demonstrates the possibilities to your customer — and fast! — but Adam has found that when someone comes in just for spot graphics, usually when they see the comps of the partial and full wraps, often they are more willing to increase their budget because of the visual impact that partial and full wraps would have for their brand.

Working In Scale

“The templates that are available to us are typically in 1/20th scale,” Adam wrote. “This makes math a nightmare, and trying to double-check the measurements on the physical vehicle much more difficult.” By changing the scale to 1/10th the Wrapix team can just move the decimal by one place to more easily check measurements, and to scale up and down without using a calculator.

Adam’s experience is that the 1/10th scale also helps when using both Illustrator and Photoshop, and making sure that all Wrapix graphics are designed at the correct resolution. If they want a final output based on the 72 dpi file from working at 1/10th scale, he wrote, they make sure to set Photoshop to 720 dpi, so that their final graphics are produced at the correct resolution.