American drivers travel an average of 14,263 miles annually, or almost 1,200 miles a month, according to data collected by the Federal Highway Administration.

That’s a lot of time spent in vehicles, with drivers paying attention to their surroundings. And that’s a big reason why commercial fleet graphics are one of the most effective marketing strategies for businesses big and small with outstanding ROI.

Here are 10 reasons why fleet managers should invest in commercial fleet wraps.

1. You will stand out. Creative fleet graphics combine words and images to tell the story of your business, complete with calls to action and your contact information. When you thoughtfully brand your fleet, you can make a lasting impression in seconds. From evergreen branding to promotional campaigns, fleet graphics are perfect for getting the word out about your incredible products or services.
2. This is cost-effective marketing. The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for fleet graphics is $0.48. Compare that to billboards ($3.56), magazine ads ($21.46), or radio ($7.75). What’s more, the costs of advertising for television, internet and print can add up quickly. There are no accumulating costs with fleet wraps — your “ad” appears every time your vehicle is on the road and generates up to 30,000 impressions daily!
3. Add polish to your image. It takes about 90 seconds for a potential customer to form an opinion about your brand. First impressions matter! Our pros are ready to work with you to create a vinyl wrap design that will capture your business identity and turn heads. No matter the size of your business, fleet graphics add that extra layer of professionalism and consistency to your brand so you can make a great impression the first time and every time.
4. Get noticed around the clock. Compare vehicle wraps to billboards: billboards are stationary and need to be changed frequently. In other words, billboards quickly become part of the landscape and are easy to ignore. By contrast, vehicle wraps stay fresh because you encounter them everywhere, both parked and on the road! Fleet graphics pack an advertising punch because they build brand awareness 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether stationary or in motion.
5. Get noticed in your local community. If you’re a small local business, it may be easy to dismiss fleet graphics as something only bigger chains benefit from. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fleet graphics are a strong, tax-deductible investment in your business. High quality fleet graphics go a long way toward building trust and reaching new customers in your community most likely to use your products or services.
6. Boost brand recognition. Don’t rely on an ad that viewers automatically tune out. Unlike commercials on TV or radio, it’s impossible to change the channel or fast forward on a vehicle wrap. Since your viewers are most likely to encounter you on the road, they’re a captive audience. Fleet wraps are a great way to organically build brand recognition as your vehicles crisscross your community and beyond.
7. Fleet wraps are customizable. Signature Graphic’s experienced designers will partner with you to create custom wraps that highlight your brand’s personality and values. Whether you need a little support or start-to-finish service, we’re here to help you create a cohesive design across your entire fleet so your brand can shine.
8. Fleet graphics are easy to change. Fleet graphics are a versatile advertising medium that can be customized, adapted, and changed to meet your goals. Sometimes you need a vehicle wrap to last for years. Other times, you need the flexibility of a quick change to advertise time-sensitive information. The good news is that fleet graphics can easily be swapped out for seasonal promotions to highlight goods and services your audience needs now or after a rebranding. Anything is possible.
9. Fleet graphics are durable. Worried that fleet graphics will need to be replaced year after year and end up breaking the bank? Don’t be. Signature Graphics proudly offers high-quality 3M materials, ensuring that your wraps look incredible and have the durability to last an average 5 to 7 years. With proper care, vehicle wraps from Signature Graphics are truly an investment that will reap benefits for the long haul.
10. Fleet graphics will protect your vehicles. Taking a vehicle on the road comes with risks. The more you drive, the more wear and tear accumulates. Enter vinyl wraps. In addition to being an effective advertising tool, high-quality vinyl wraps protect against damage by adding another layer between your car and the elements. Fleet wraps can act as a protective layer, shielding your vehicles from scratches, UV rays, and other environmental damage.

Contact the Experts in High Quality Vehicle Wraps

The only thing that could make fleet graphics better is working with a great fleet graphics partner. At Signature Graphics, our goal is to make the vehicle branding process as smooth and effortless as possible for our clients.

Think fleet graphics might be right or you? We’re your trusted partner for custom and high-impact vinyl wraps for every type of vehicle, no matter its size or shape. Contact us today for a quote.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

Your semi-truck is one of the most visible pieces of your business. Using semi-truck graphics to display your company’s branding should be an important part of your marketing strategy.

High-impact, colorful graphics will turn your semi-truck cab into a rolling advertisement for your business that’s seen by everyone who passes it, making the cost per impression mere pennies compared with other types of advertising.

But planning semi-truck graphics isn’t a simple process. That’s why you need a trusted partner like Signature Graphics. We specialize in large fleet graphics, and our team has the know-how to ensure your fleet has design consistency that meets your brand guidelines and that your graphics include required safety and regulatory information, no matter where your semi-truck travels.

Key Elements of Semi-Truck Graphics

Door Lettering – Semi-trucks often highlight the business name or logo across a large portion of the cab door.

Graphics – The design, illustration or marketing message that fills the rest of the cab real estate and brings the business brand to life. This is typically what most people think of when they think of semi-truck graphics. This should be creative, be high-definition and leave an impression.

Truck Numbers – Fleet vehicles are typically assigned a unique number for logistical purposes, and the larger your fleet, the more important it is to be able to see the truck number at a glance. These graphics are often placed on the door of the semi-truck’s cab.

Regulation Numbers – Unique U.S. Department of Transportation Numbers are required in a number of situations, such as semi-trucks that make interstate deliveries or that cross state lines. Some states also require any commercial motor vehicle to obtain USDOT Numbers, regardless of where they deliver. It’s important to work with a company like Signature that knows regulations and can help you navigate them and display regulation numbers properly on your vehicles.

Safety Lettering and Decals – Graphics also keep your drivers and the traveling public safe., Highly visible graphics can inform other drivers about the safe following distance, blind spots, hazardous materials on board or speed limit or operational instructions such as “this vehicle makes frequent stops.” In the unfortunate event of an accident, graphics can show the location of the vehicle’s fire extinguisher. In addition, you may have other warning labels no-step zones, clearance and height limits, and more.

Trust the Experts at Signature

Experience matters when it comes to semi-truck graphics, and Signature Graphics’ knowledgeable team can provide a creative, consistent and complete package of graphics for your fleet. We proudly offer high-quality 3M materials and our “signature” technology, brandRESPONSE, to manage the process from concept to completion. Get in touch today.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

Many of us take the ability to navigate through a building or other environment for granted — until the day we find ourselves turned around and frustrated by a lack of good wayfinding graphics inside a space.

January is International Wayfinding Month, an observance that highlights the importance of wayfinding information systems in today’s communities.

Wayfinding graphics are one of the primary services that Signature Graphics provides, a service built on more than 40 years of experience creating navigational tools that easy to understand and unique to your purpose and your brand.

Why Wayfinding Matters

Wayfinding is a set of tools — typically signs — that help a person navigate from point A to point B within a space. These tools are a must for your public spaces.

These graphics and signs are helpful in any environment and critical in large and complex spaces such as sports arenas, hospitals, school campuses, shopping centers and transportation hubs. Wayfinding helps people find their way around and as a result, makes people feel welcome, comfortable and safe.

It takes skill and experience to do that. To develop an effective wayfinding system, designers must be able to put themselves in the shoes of a visitor and translate complicated system of maps, floor plans and building directories into simple and straightforward instructions.

How to Put Together Successful Wayfinding

There are four key steps to creating an effective wayfinding system.

1. Determine Your Strategy: Wayfinding systems can include signage, maps, color-coding and symbols. Think about your space and the common ways people move through it. Then design a system that will best meet your visitors’ needs.

2. Focus on Navigation, Orientation and Landmarks: A wayfinding system must communicate these three basic things. People need to know how to move from point A to point B and be able to figure out where they are within the space while they do it. Good wayfinding also points out important landmarks around them.

3. Be Functional: The basic wayfinding signs have four purposes:

• Provide information
• Give directions
• Identify important spaces like restrooms, landmarks and entrances and exits
• Give warnings such as no parking or no smoking

4. Be True to Your Brand: Design wayfinding graphics and signs using your brand’s fonts, colors and symbols.

Wayfinding Must-Haves for Municipalities and Businesses

Communication builds good relationships with your community, and signage is a powerful way to share information.

Wayfinding systems must have simplicity, so directions and graphics are easy to understand at a glance. That means translating a complicated system of floor plans, office directories and maps into plain language and considering the way the public would naturally move through a space. This is imperative for both businesses and governments.

Wayfinding signs must use design elements from your brand as well because it will make your directions trustworthy.

When you need to go big, go big. Banners, streetlight banners and window films offer. They are available in a variety of shapes and sizes and are sure to catch the eye of everyone who passes by or under them.

Window films can be applied on the interior or exterior sides and can be installed for short-term or long-term needs. As a bonus, window films can also provide a sense of privacy for an interior space.

Use Wayfinding to Create an Experience

Wayfinding is one component of environmental graphic design, which blends functionality with creativity to bring a space to life and put focus on your brand and messaging.

Wayfinding graphics make your space accessible to everyone and allow visitors and customers to move around with ease, finding what they’re looking for, discovering products and services they didn’t know they needed, or both. Good wayfinding encourages action and engagement!

Use Wayfinding to Make People Feel Safe

An effective wayfinding system, supported by high-quality and high-impact graphics, give visitors a sense of security within a space. That’s especially important when it comes to schools.

Educators can use clear and consistent wayfinding graphics and signs to support the school day. Signs can guide students, staff and families through the building and helping them orient themselves within the hallways. Color can be used to highlight safe zones, emergency exits or internal directional guidance so students always know how to get help if they need it.

Contact Signature with All Your Wayfinding Needs

Signature Graphics specializes in wayfinding graphic that work. No matter what sector you specialize in — business, education, entertainment, marketing agency or government — you deserve to work with a knowledgeable and professional partner you can trust.

Signature proudly uses quality 3M materials, and you have access to your projects 24/7 through brandRESPONSE, our highly customized project and asset management tool.

Let us pair you with an expert who can guide you through a wayfinding plan that is both useful and true to your unique brand.  Contact us today to request your quote.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

It’s no secret that a huge emphasis is placed on branding when it comes to marketing your product or service. Not only does having a cohesive brand make it easier to market to different customer bases across different channels, but it also raises the chances of being remembered by customers, increasing loyalty.

A brand is more than just the business that markets a particular service or product. A brand is an identity that the business has developed for itself. Visual elements like logos and graphics, in addition to intangible aspects like your marketing strategy and your business’ relationship with customers, make up the brand.

Branding and purchasing

“A brand is the identity that the business has developed for itself.”

Every business wants to establish a loyal customer base. The best way to do that is to ensure that you deliver a product that satisfies a customer’s needs, as well as make sure your brand stands out in consumers’ minds. This way, the next time they’re in the market for a product like yours, the one they used last time will pop into their head. According to Brand Anew, a sense of nostalgia is likely to keep customers loyal to your brand, despite other options like a potentially better product or even a lower price.

Exactly how important is customer loyalty to a brand? Marketing Tech Blog found that it’s pretty crucial. Approximately 59 percent of shoppers preferred to stick with familiar brands, even when purchasing items they’d never bought before. 59 percent of people also said that they decide whether a particular brand becomes their favorite option after purchasing or trying the service just once. The pressure’s on for a good first impression.

Engage with your consumers

If someone tweets you, be sure to respond. If someone leaves a disappointing review on one of your products on your website, reach out to them to correct the problem. Twenty-two percent of Marketing Tech Blog’s responders stated that authenticity was the most important brand attribute to them. It’s crucial that you leave a good impression, as a few bad reviews can really stunt a new business’ growth. You don’t want to just make a single sale, you want to build a long-term relationship with your client base.

How to brand your product or service

While a well-established brand like Coca-Cola or Ford doesn’t have to worry about developing a brand, many new small-business owners lose sleep over the concept of creating a brand identity. Developing a brand is something that happens over time, however, it’s important to know how to kick-start the process.

Here are a few tips for beginning to establish a brand for your business:

Be consistent: Whether you sell your product in person, on an official website, through a social media channel like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Etsy, or via all channels, you need to have a cohesive name and logo so consumers know that all of these channels are connected. If you communicate with consumers over email, be sure to include an email signature or even email address with your product name included.

Be creative: As a business, you want to pave your own way. Be creative with your logo, slogan, and products. Don’t try to ride the coattails of an already-established brand with a similar product. You don’t want potential customers to view yours as a knock-off, and using a cheap ploy like mimicking what already worked for another entity will lower your credibility as a brand.

Here are a few ways to maximize the impact of your brand over time:

Promote: Always have a marketing plan for short term and long term promotion of you brand. Maximize impact with Signature Graphics’ high-quality fleet graphics, window graphics and environmental graphics that creatively showcase your branding and choose temporary graphics as an attention-getting way to advertise short term and seasonal promotions.

Be authentic: Your brand identity is what makes you unique among competitors in the marketplace. Being true to your brand will build trust and loyalty among your customers. Always be genuine, transparent and consistent in your brand communication, including tag lines, mission statements, values statements and vision statements.

Establish brand guidelines: Brand guidelines document all the elements that make up your brand, including logos, colors, fonts, imagery and tone — as well as the rules on how these elements work together to create your brand identity. These guidelines are an important tool for anyone who creates advertising and promotional materials for your business, such as fleet graphics, window graphics and environmental graphics.

Be consistent: Follow your brand guidelines and ensure that every message is authentic and true to your brand.

Evolve and adapt: Evaluate your brand regularly and measure customer feedback. Evolve and adapt your brand over time to stay relevant and meet changing trends in your market.

Good branding brings lasting benefits

The impact of branding, especially when it’s used consistently and creatively, will be felt across your business. These benefits include:

Recognition and recall: Customers will be able to identify your business immediately upon seeing just one element of your brand, such as a logo, color, packaging or slogan.

Trust and credibility: An authentic and consistent brand gives your business the professional edge and builds trust among customers, meaning they will turn to you to meet their needs.

Loyalty: Authentic branding creates true and emotional connections with customers. They support you because you are an important part of their community.

Perceived value from your audience: Consistent branding and customer experiences help people see that your business offers better quality and better service than your competitors.

Competitive advantage: Branding is your unique signature and helps your company stand apart and reach your most important customers.

Longevity: Businesses last and grow by having a memorable brand that’s built on a strong set of values that matter to customers. 

Let Signature Graphics Help 

Signature Graphics has been meeting the needs of our clients since 1986. We’ve helped businesses of all sizes with their branding needs from design to fleet graphics, to retail or environmental graphics. Our professionals are ready to guide you through the process. Contact us today to get a quote!

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

Changeable fleet, environmental and window graphics make it easy and economical for businesses to update the messaging to highlight short-term promotions, new products or seasonal messages.

These high-impact yet temporary graphics could also be used to support causes and nonprofits that connect with a business’ brand, such as promoting a community food pantry during the holiday season or celebrating a local sports team during a run to a championship.

Businesses are more than profit-generating entities. They are a vibrant part of the community because of their ability to nurture connections among people. Those connections can do a lot of good. 

One way to offer your support is to partner directly with a nonprofit organization for a short-term awareness campaign. Use temporary graphics to include the nonprofit’s logo or tagline on your fleet vehicles, showing your support for their mission and encouraging others to do the same.

Fleet Graphics 4 Good Ideas

Signature’s high-quality 3M fleet graphics can be designed in a variety of sizes, meaning you can illustrate a cause or the needs of a nonprofit without it overtaking the whole exterior of your vehicles. 

Using these temporary vinyl graphics, you can dedicate space on a full or partial vehicle wrap toward your chosen cause or simply add a smaller decal that highlights your ask to customers using text or a QR code to drive them to a website for more information.

Temporary graphics can be placed anywhere on your vehicle and even combined with your existing branding.

You know the impressions that fleet graphics can make. No matter their size, these vibrant graphics turn vehicles into mobile billboards that get noticed by drivers and pedestrians alike on the streets of your community.

Window Graphics 4 Good Ideas

Like fleet graphics, temporary storefront window graphics offer a large space to let your message capture the imagination of anyone passing by or walking into your business.

Changeable window graphics can range from full coverage to small decals depending how big an impression you want to make.

Smaller decals on entrance and exit doors can remind customers of your support of a nonprofit or community cause and give instructions on how they could get involved too. Or work with one of our talented designers to incorporate imagery and your messages of charity or support into larger window graphics, seamlessly blending with your existing business brand.

Environmental Graphics 4 Good Ideas

Beyond windows, Signature can create temporary graphics to go on walls, ceilings, floors — nearly any space can become a short-term advertising outlet for your cause.

Strategically placed signage can pack a punch. Signature’s temporary interior retail graphics can be scaled to any size too fit your location and are easily removable at the campaign’s end.

Likewise temporary retail floor graphics get noticed because they’re in an unexpected location. These, too, are available in any size, easily removable and will not damage your flooring.

You’ll create new visibility for the nonprofit and create a shared sense of purpose with your customers. Doing good for your community can also do a lot of good for your business, building emotional connections and reinforcing your brand values with the community.

Let’s Get Creative

Signature Graphics specialists will work with you to create unique and eye-catching changeable fleet graphic for every occasion, including special causes. We offer top-quality products, 24/7 management, and tailored planning and design. Contact us today.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

The Signature Difference was on vibrant display at the 2023 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The Signature team designed, produced and installed eye-catching, holiday-themed vehicle wraps for the RAM trucks pulling the floats for Wonka, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Santa!

Even more impressive, those exceptionally creative and perfectly executed wraps went from idea to reality in just 72 hours.

You read that right — 72 hours to design, produce, ship to the client and install!

This project was all about teamwork. The Signature team, through our partnership with Signature Express, supported RAM by leveraging our ability to engineer high-quality full wraps on tight deadlines.

Working under a 72-hour deadline for an event as big as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade requires the experience and skill to understand clients’ needs quickly and efficiently, says Alyssa Despoy, division manager for Signature Express.

“Signature Express has one point of contact which makes this extremely easy. I ask project-specific questions to ensure maximum efficiency, enabling Signature Express to deliver precisely what the customer needs within their project timeline,” Desopy says.

An amazingly talented group of designers and installers jumped right in and got to work.

“A lot of clients will have a simple idea, but our designers turn these ideas into concepts and ensure that the preconceived vehicle wrap concepts perfectly align and conform to the vehicle’s contours, ensuring a seamless and optimal fit,” Despoy says. “And our installers are the ones who use their skills to turn these wraps into art out on the road.”

The entire Signature Express team takes pride in delivering high-quality work when promised.

“The biggest challenge is hoping that all the pieces of the puzzle with fall where they need to,” Despoy says. “In situations like this, we are expecting every department to communicate, hit their mark and help move the project on to the next department. Quick timelines require all eyes and hands on deck and leave absolutely no room for error from any of the experts involved, from start to finish.”

Signature puts in this kind of effort for all its clients — whether they know Santa Claus or not. Our graphic services and professional designers and installation experts are ready to get to work on your vehicle wrap. Contact us today.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

When you walk into a business, you see the company’s branding and color scheme splashed around the space. You see directional signs pointing out departments or specific offices as well as exits, restrooms and other critical areas. Light shines through promotional advertising on widows. 

You are immersed in that business and encouraged to act. You feel at home.

This is the job of environmental graphic design: Thoughtful planning and creative graphics create a space that is both functional and attractive to customers and puts the business’ branding and messages front and center by using every available space.

Here are a few ways that environmental design can impact the customer experience.

Wayfinding and accessibility: Directional signs, known as wayfinding, are important to helping all customers explore your physical space and make it easy for them to find things. Don’t let your visitors feel lost or unwelcome.

Storytelling: Large graphics such as wall murals or window coverings offer ample opportunity to tell the story of your business on a grand scale. Curate images that illustrate your mission and values. Use original photos, messages from founders and more to honor your business’ history and show your long-term ties to the community. 

Encourage action and engagement: Signage placed throughout a space can highlight promotions, special sales and new products and services. Be playful. Tease a customer’s FOMO. Similarly, use signage, kiosks and other touchpoints to ask questions or gamify information, urging customers to action.

Environmental graphic design organizes a space to meet people’s needs and inspire them to action. 

Signature Graphics partners with clients to design dynamic graphics with meaningful messages that maximize the available space and create engaging and cohesive experiences for visitors. To being reimagining your space, contact us today.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.

Mobile advertising using temporary vinyl graphics or complete vehicle wraps remains one of the most effective marketing tools available today. They’re cost effective, highly visible to potential customers and, done right, can leave a lasting impression.

Today, no federal laws or regulations exist that prohibit vehicle graphics or wraps. However, states, cities and other localities may have their own fleet graphic advertising laws and rules that could affect your plan.

Before you order a custom vehicle wrap or put a sign on your vehicle, it’s important to do the research, and the team at Signature Graphics is ready to share our expertise and experience and help you navigate fleet advertising regulations.

Here are a few areas to think about.

Size and Placement of Ads

While restrictions on content of vehicle advertisements are rare because of First Amendment rights, restrictions on where a vehicle decal or wrap can be placed focus on safety. Signage generally cannot obstruct the visibility of the person driving the vehicle and, in some cases, should not obstruct the visibility of a person trying to see into the vehicle. Vehicle wraps often fall under the same rules as tinted windows.

Vehicle Registration

Some states require a vehicle carrying any advertising to be registered as a commercial vehicle, meaning you can’t wrap your personal vehicle to advertise your business. Check this with your local DMV office. Also be mindful that re-registering a vehicle as commercial can come with additional fees, rules of use, insurance costs and tax considerations.

Parking and Mobility

Local laws and regulations may affect where you can park a wrapped vehicle, meaning your business’ car, truck or van can’t act as a mobile billboard that’s unattended in a high-traffic area.

Homeowners Association Rules

If you plan to drive your vehicle home and you live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association, read the bylines. Your HOA may not allow a vehicle wrapped with advertising to be parked in a location visible from the street. 

Crossing State Lines

If your vehicle needs to travel outside your local area or cross state lines, you’ll need to know how the rules and regulations change and factor that into your design plans.

The Signature Advantage

Signature Graphics can help you navigate local, state and federal laws and regulations for your fleet graphics and vehicle wraps with both a knowledgeable team and our “signature” technology, brandRESPONSE, to manage the process from concept to completion. Get in touch today.

We proudly use 3M^TM graphic films and overlaminates.