More than 20 years ago, Caroline Shaw studied graphic design, but her career ventured into bookkeeping. She rediscovered her artistic passion, and taught herself how to use a Graphtec cutting plotter to make signs. Shaw became fascinated with vehicle wraps and began to perfect this trade. She now operates Shaw About Vinyl in Somerset, England.
Shaw said British customers tend to be more conservative in their vehicle-graphic choices than U.S. business owners; they’ve only become “brave” in ordering more aggressive graphics within the last four years. Repeat and referral customers have created a backbone for her business, but Shaw and a network of trusted wrap subcontractors help each other with overflow work.
She landed a major coup to wrap 636 cars on the London Underground subway system in advance of the 2012 Summer Olympics (and six cars afterward to thank volunteers for their service). She successfully bid for the contract to partner with a painting specialist whose work preceded the wraps. The subway cars arrived prepared for her work – freshly painted, dents filled, and scratches sanded away.
She wrapped the train’s panels with Hexis HX100-WG2 air-release material, which were printed on a Roland Versa-CAMM SP-540i printer/plotter with Eco-Sol Max eco-solvent inks and protected from dirt and abrasions by AGLR anti-graffiti overlaminate.
“Working with the anti-graffiti overlaminate was a challenge, because it couldn’t be fitted with any surface tension,” Shaw said. “This is very different than the heating and stretching with most vehicle-wrap jobs. They had to be very carefully custom-fitted.”
Shaw and a fellow signmaker tackled a smaller-scale, but challenging project, for a dual-advertisement wrap. The vehicle, an 18-year-old, London taxi, required lots of TLC.
“It had its original paint job, with original rust,” she said. “We had to strip the entire surface and sand away rust before we could even start cleaning it. The grill, door handles and other fixtures had become stiff and were difficult to remove. But, for a wrap with longevity, it’s required.”
Shaw printed the seven panels with Avery MPI 1900 cast, inkjet media on her Roland Versa-CAMM SP-540i with Eco-Sol MAX inks. The job entailed seven panels – two for the sides, two for the roof, two for the hood and one for the trunk – with a few fill-in pieces.
To protect the graphics, which advertise an employee-recruitment agency and a pub, she applied Avery DOL 1460 glossy overlaminate on a Kala pressure laminator.
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