Your promotional vehicle design should be a true showcase for your brand. That’s why it’s essential to get every element right! You don’t want a misplaced logo or low-res message to affect your campaign or change how your audience sees your brand.
Follow the advice below to get your vehicle branding ready for print. Don’t worry; we’ll tweak your design as needed and send a proof back to ensure you’re happy!
Before you start designing, step back and ask why you’re running your campaign. Is it a summer activation, a festive takeover, or part of a brand relaunch?
Define these goals early and let them steer your vehicle design. Think ‘campaign first’, not brand-only. Yes, your vehicle branding should be consistent, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spruce it up with decorative touches that play with seasonal themes.
We suggest browsing our Pinterest account for examples of past vehicle designs, then adding your favourites to a mood board. You can also watch our video shorts on Wistia!
Now’s the time to sense-check everything. Is your logo crisp and clean? Are your images high resolution? Do fonts still reflect the tone of your brand? Your vehicle branding should be big, bold and seen from a distance – and anything blurry will lose impact.
Avoid low-res or pixelated assets, and if you’re unsure about quality, ask your designer for updated versions. You may also want to refresh supporting graphics or simplify straplines, so your message stands out on the side of the vehicle.
With your vehicle booked, we’ll send you a 2D vehicle template – which is edited in Adobe Illustrator. This is where you’ll create your design using your branded assets.
Avoid placing key messages near door handles, ridges, or panel joins where they might get cut off or distorted. Take note of doors and hatches, as you’ll want your vehicle design to be visible at all times.
Think about positioning to give your assets room to breathe. And remember, the more complex an area is to wrap, the simpler the design should be in that space!
For logos, patterns and messaging, work with vector files (AI, SVG, EPS) wherever possible. These can be scaled up without loss, so they’re perfect for vehicle branding.
For images, use JPEG or PNG formats with a resolution of at least 750 DPI to ensure they can be upscaled for your promotional vehicle without a drop in quality.
You should also allow enough bleed on all sides to ensure there are no gaps in the finished design. We’ll simply trim the excess when installing your wrap.
Large format printers work using CMYK colours rather than RGB, which is digital-only. If you design in RGB, you risk colours printing inaccurately because the printer will look for the closest CMYK match – and it won’t get the exact shade!
Designing in CMYK ensures your colours are accurate, for vehicle branding that’s as impressive in real life as it is on screen.
If your brand uses specific colours, you can specify a Pantone (like 2025’s popular Mocha Mousse!) and supply it to us. This allows us to match precise hues and apply them consistently across your promotional vehicle.
Before sending your artwork to print, convert all text into outlines (also known as vector paths). This is incredibly helpful to our team, as it means we won’t need your original fonts to view your vehicle design correctly.
Outlining preserves the exact shape of your letters, so your typography looks exactly as intended. They can’t be edited as live text once they've been outlined, so check your spelling and keep an editable version saved in case you want to make changes later.
When preparing your design artwork, don’t leave anything behind. Embed your images, logos and other assets so nothing goes missing when someone else opens the file. It’s an easy way to prevent broken links or low-res previews that delay production.
If your workflow relies on linked files (for example, when collaborating across teams), that’s fine too. Just make sure to use Illustrator’s ‘Package’ feature to bundle all links, fonts and artwork into one tidy folder so nothing gets lost in transit.
If you’re unsure about how to bring your vehicle design together, then our explainer video is here to help – courtesy of our sister company Raccoon.
This video runs through the template design process and outlines common pitfalls to avoid. It’s the easiest way to see what ‘print-ready’ really looks like in action.