Are you looking for novel ways to get the word out about your products or services? In that case, vehicle wraps are the perfect way to make the most of your advertising budget and achieve your marketing goals. These vinyl wraps can wrap around your cars, trailers, vans, and trucks, turning your business vehicles into traveling billboards.
Materials Used To Create Vehicle Graphics
At Signature Graphics, we use three kinds of graphic substrates: reflective material, calendared vinyl, and non-reflective vinyl. The differences between these lie in their durability and final look.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of what to expect:
Non-Reflective Vinyl
These are made from heavy-duty vinyl and have an adhesive side that sticks onto the vehicle. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) strengthens the material, making these wraps extremely durable.
Non-reflective vinyl wraps also contain plasticizers to add flexibility that allows for small expansions and contractions in the graphic due to temperature changes. The plasticizers also make bumps and small scrapes completely unnoticeable.
Non-reflective vinyl wraps were the primary form of vehicle graphics when they first became popular. One of the biggest problems people faced while using these graphics was fading and cracking.
Since then, manufacturers have developed vinyl compositions that can withstand heat and light without fading or cracking. Your vehicle graphic will stand out and look good as new even if your van or car has been in the sun for hours. The UV absorbers and heat stabilizers in the vinyl protect it, thereby helping you enjoy your graphics for around five years.
Calendared Vinyl
Calendared vinyl gets its name from the calendaring manufacturing method, which uses massive high-temperature steel rollers to press the vinyl into a thin sheet. The formulation comprises liquid softener, PVC powder, and custom colors as needed.
The process uses multiple rolls to make the vinyl thinner, wider, and more uniform. The vinyl’s temperature is high due to the heated rollers when it gets to the embossing stage. At this point, an embossing roll imprints a pattern on the film and makes it achieve the necessary gloss level.
High-grade calendared vinyl uses polymeric plasticizers, but its cheaper versions use monomeric plasticizers. Depending on the grade of calendared vinyl, it could last you between one and seven years.
Calendared films made using modern manufacturing methods shrink less, have better conformability, and are glossier and thinner than those produced initially. However, since they’re usually thicker than other vinyl wraps, they’re best-suited to vehicles with flat surfaces or gentle curves.
Reflective Material
Ambulances, emergency trucks, and police cars use reflective vinyl decals that are prominent at night. Reflective vinyl materials aren’t made for morning use—it’s made for night visibility when the only sources of illumination are motor headlights or street lights. Using reflective vinyl wraps eliminates the need for electric lighting.
Reflective vinyl offers users a more limited choice of colors. Moreover, there’s also a shift in hue from daytime to nighttime. For example, while white reflective vinyl appears white at night, it’s grayish or pearlescent in the daytime.
The basic kinds of reflective vinyl include retro-reflective and prismatic varieties. Retro-reflective vinyl comprises pigment and glass beads to reflect emitted light, enabling the user to read the viewer or decal.
Prismatic vinyl wraps use tiny prisms in their base. These prisms split and reflect emitted light, thereby directing it back towards the viewer.
Selecting The Right Vinyl For Your Vehicles
Below is a list of the types of custom graphic wraps we create.
- Car and truck wraps: These are ideal for you, whether you have a service fleet of large vans or small cars.
- Semi Truck & Trailer wraps: If you own a trailer, it’s a massive advertising board that sends your message to the many cars that travel behind them on roads and freeways.
- Emergency vehicle graphics: These reflective designs add nighttime visibility to your emergency vehicles.
- Spedian changeable graphics: These are best for seasonal promotions since they use no nuts or bolts—thereby cutting advertising costs for you.
- Straight and box truck graphics: These graphics help you make the most of your vehicle fleet by reinforcing brand messaging.
- Van and step graphics: You can introduce a new product or reinforce brand messaging using these graphics for your van fleet.
If you’re looking for a custom vehicle graphic to advertise your business, look no further than Signature. Contact us today for custom-made solutions that help you stand out from your competitors with our high-quality decals, signs, and graphics advertisements.