Working to an incredibly tight deadline is an inevitable task if you work in the graphic design industry. One project that challenged us was a vehicle wrap design created for Green MotorSport. Our task was to transform a Nissan Leaf into a rolling advertisement, however we only had 48 hours to come up with a finished design.
The Nissan Leaf would be Great Britain’s entry into the ‘WAVE’ (World Advanced Vehicle Expedition). Over 20 advanced pure electric vehicles would be driven from Paris to Prague, giving demonstrations at thirty cities en route.
You really feel the pressure when given such a tight deadline and the very thought of a poor design travelling all over Europe with our company name on didn’t help. The idea was to create a rally car design with an eco twist using layers of Birch leaves for the base of the car whilst a second layer of earth was used to break up the design and house the main sponsors logos.
The original artwork created with Adobe Illustrator
You will always come up against small issues when working to such tight deadlines. Obtaining logos from sponsors suitable for large format printing was one of those unforseen issues. This did add to the workload as we had to carefully re-draw many of the logos again, but 2 days and 2 extremely late nights later the design was complete. It is great to see a design that you have stared at on a computer screen for long hours come to life. We decided to head over to the signage company chosen to wrap the car for a sneak peek at the work in progress.
Cleaning the surfaces of the Nissan Leaf before the graphics could be applied
Extensive cleaning of the Nissan Leaf’s surface had to be carried out before the vinyl could be applied. A wide format digital printer was then used to print the vast sheets of vinyl that would cover the car.
On this occasion we used the customer’s choice of signage company to wrap the car. The sign team agreed to apply the graphics at a fantastic price in return for sponsorship on the car, but they only had one day to apply the graphics.
Having one day to apply the graphics did have its issues and having to rush the job resulted in the vinyl being applied unevenly. The signage team made design changes without our guidance causing minor changes and errors to the design. On any other occasion the vinyl would be removed and the wrap process started again, but expensive materials had been generously donated to Green Motorsport so starting over was not an option.
Some of the uneven and incorrectly applied logos : (
This was a shame to see as many hours went into the original design and attention to detail is important to us. Perhaps I am just being picky and a perfectionist but symmetry is very important when designing and applying graphics to any vehicle. On the whole the wrap looked fantastic as you can see from the images below.
A journalist from the Surrey Advertiser turned up at Green MotorSport to take photos of the car, Gordon Foat (Director of Green MotorSport) and the Galvanize Design team. This was the first time we were to view the finished car so to say we were excited was an understatement.
Gordon Foat (Green MotorSport) and Gaby James (Galvanize Design)
The Band ‘True Ingredients‘ were just one of the many sponsors photographed with the Nissan before Gordon headed off on his European edpedition. If you haven’t heard of the band and like a bit of funky Hip Hop they are well worth a listen.
The band 'True Ingredients' with the Nissan in London
Once in France Gordon took the car and met the Directeur General for Nissan in Chantilly. We had also received a message from Nissan UK via our Facebook page with the message ‘Fantastic work!’ with regards to the design of the wrap : )
Directeur General for Nissan in Chantilly, France
Be sure to keep an eye on the blog as we will be continuously updating the story as and when news occurs.
Article written by the Surrey Advertiser
Galvanize Design 