One of the things that we practice is giving back to the world with our positive energy. We enjoy sharing with others and encouraging them to find their creative passion. We recently had the opportunity to travel to a library in Tijuana to help some children with their creative growth. Approximately 25 children went through the whole process of producing a theater show from beginning to end during the course of a week. Attention Getters Design helped on the first day with creating the backdrops. Kevin worked with the children to paint the scenes and taught them how to airbrush. Tracey filmed and took pictures of the project in action. Enjoy!

There are two basic types of files - Raster (bitmaps) and Vector (outlines). Examples: a photo is usually a Raster image, and a font is usually a Vector or outline. The most common formats for vector files are EPS (Encapsulated Postscript), AI (Adobe Illustrator), or PDF (Acrobat). Common bitmap formats include TIF (or TIFF - Tagged Image File Format) JPG (or JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group), and GIF (Graphics Interchange Format. Be careful of GIF files as these are most commonly used for websites and are usually not high enough resolution to be enlarged significantly.) There are a couple of additional considerations to keep in mind - While EPS, PS, and AI files commonly contain vector data, they can also include bitmap data as well. The opposite is not true. TIF's, JPG's and GIF's only carry raster data and do not carry any vector data.

The biggest difference between Raster and Vector file formats is that a vector image can be infinitely enlarged since the image is created with outlines or line segments and curves. The amount a Raster (bitmap) image can be enlarged depends on the original resolution, and accepted loss of clarity versus the accepted viewing distance. Raster images most commonly used for photographic images, but they are also a bit more complicated to set up and produce a quality large format print. We will concentrate a bit more on setting up Raster files.


A raster image (bitmap) is made up of tiny dots, and each dot can be one of many thousands, if not millions of colors. There is also two color modes or pallets - CYMK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) or RGB (Red, Green, Blue). Generally, the RGB color space is larger, and many RIP programs like this format to produce the most vibrant colors. I know this might seem odd, as the printer is a CYMK device. Eventually all files will be converted to CYMK by the RIP (Raster Image Processor) program when it outputs to the printer. Non the less, starting with RGB files and letting the RIP make this conversion will generally produce the most vibrant images.

Raster images also have limitations on how much it can be enlarged depending on the original file's resolution. We recommend to keep the final output resolution between 100 and 150 DPI (dots per inch) at FULL SIZE. Below 100 DPI and you will start to see a sacrifice of quality. Over 150 DPI, you're probably wasting hard drive space and processing time This file resolution is not to be confused with print resolution. Even though our input files are 100-200 DPI, we typically print at at least 360 DPI and more often 720 DPI. This ensures the smallest droplet and lack of graininess. One exception might be on a billboard or a tractor-trailer. These areas are so large, a 200 DPI input file will be too large for most computers to deal with. When working in Photoshop, these files can swell to well over 1 Gigabyte. In this case, we may start an input file size as low as 72 DPI to reduce a little overhead.

How can I determine how much I can enlarge a Raster image? In keeping to out 100 DPI at full size guideline, here’s an example: If you take a file that starts out at 600 pixels wide, the largest you can print keeping to the 100dpi rule is 6 inches. (Divide 600 pixels by 100 = 6") Of course it is possible to enlarge the file much larger in Photoshop, but this just multiplies the pixels around each other, and you will just create a fuzzy mess. Basically Photoshop will just take each pixel and create a new pixel next to it halfway in color to the next, and so on. This is why most website images are not useable for large format output. There is just not enough pixel data. Website graphics are created at as small a resolution as possible to create a reasonable image to view on a monitor and reduce bandwidth. This makes the website load as quickly as possible.

So what about that uber expensive digital camera I just bought? Can't I just use that? A high end digital camera on the market today may be as high as 12 Megapixels or more. (a megapixel = 1 million pixels) A 12 Megapixel camera, for example, may have a resolution of 4288 pixels wide x 2848 pixels high. In keeping our file within our 100 DPI guideline, the maximum size we can output with minimal distortion is 42.88" wide.(4288 pixels wide divided by 100) The larger the original and more pixel data you have, the more leeway you have to work with. With this much pixel data, we can go a reasonable amount larger than 42.88" and still achieve good results. Keep in mind, the larger we go from the original, the more fuzzy and pixilated the final output will occur. The next consideration is how much "fuzziness" is acceptable. Well, it depends on how the image is viewed. Just as you would not be viewing a 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper from 40 feet, you would also not expect to view a tractor trailer from 6". Billboards would be another extreme and their resolution might be as low as 2 to 20 DPI. But the billboard might be 40 feet in the air, and viewed from many hundreds of feet, the resolution can be much, much less.

There are also filters that can do a nice job smoothing out the "jaggies" of less that optimal files. One that we like is called Photozoom. It's proprietary algorithms filter a less than optimal artwork to result in a more acceptable image than Photoshop when enlarging artwork, as long as there is sufficient pixel data there to start with. It can't perform miracles, but it can make a significant improvement.

A special thank you to Ordway Sign Supply, www.signsupply.com  for this article.

At its core, a vehicle wrap is a dynamic outdoor advertising medium that has a very limited time frame to catch your customer’s eye, and convey your message. With digital printers becoming more and more affordable, the skills used to create an expert design, are becoming second to the ability to print anything and stick it to your vehicle.

Below are 10 tips to help you make sure you get the most of your vehicle wrap’s design:

1. Choose a company with a graphic design background.

This is quite possibly the most obvious and crucial tip of them all. Vehicle wraps are a graphic medium. As mentioned above, anyone can buy a printer & laminator. A background in graphic design is a must to know how to convey your businesses' message and create an interest in your product or service. Don’t be afraid to ask for the design qualifications from the firm.

2. Synchronize your wrap.

Your vehicle wrap is an extension of your company’s brand. It is a rolling business card of sorts. Make sure to synchronize your vehicle wrap design with your existing marketing materials. Your designer’s first job should be to gather your current branding and marketing materials to create a design that is an extension of your brand. It is extremely important that the first step of your wrap design is the compilation of your logo, any ads you are currently running, your yellow page listing, your sales fliers, etc. to create a final product that gains brand awareness for your company. Anything less is hurting your company, not helping it.

3. Don’t oversell!

Nothing is harder to read than a vehicle wrap jammed to the gills with information and/or products. Remember you have a very limited time frame to catch your potential customer’s eye. Pick your best selling points or products, and make sure they are utilized in your wrap design.

4. K.I.S.S.

Another well known commonly used term. Keep It Simple Stupid. As mentioned in #2, the same applies for the design itself. You may have your message nailed down and well organized, but if you clutter the design aspect of the wrap, you are falling into the same trap. Our rule of thumb, is no more than one high resolution image for each side of the vehicle, mixed with a couple of vector or raster design elements that compliment your current marketing materials. Anything else will leave the viewer scrambling to focus on your message that is crowded out by confusing design.

5. Location, location, location.

Ah the old real estate term. Well guess what. It applies just as much in the world of vehicle wraps. A good artist must know how and where to place each individual message or element on your vehicle to make it as effective as possible. Every vehicle has a different shape, and can be potentially compounded by the amount or size of graphic coverage that you chose. Make sure your designer understands how to utilize this space to get your message across. For example, you wouldn’t want your text to be stretched across a flared fender rendering your phone number or web address useless by making it look like a crooked line. The same applies to your logo and other elements. Vehicle wrap templates are 2 dimensional, not 3 dimensional. An experienced designer will be familiar with your vehicle and understand these limitations of templates. Just because it looks good on paper, doesn’t necessarily mean it will on the vehicle.

6. Fills are for soft drinks, not wraps.

With the popularity of vehicle wraps growing daily, and the people with a lack of a design background offering them to their customers, an unfortunate product has come to be a mainstay of vehicle wrap design. This product is called a “fills” collection. These are usually purchased on disks from companies that specialize in these types of designs and they are typically dropped into your wrap as a way to “fill” the background. Text is usually hovered over the fill with some sort of stroke, or drop shadow that is usually heavy and bold to float it above the fill. This is a dead giveaway that you are dealing with a designer that doesn’t have a graphic design background and may or may not know how to design your wrap properly.

7. Utilize the back of your vehicle.

Sometimes you can’t get around it. You have a complex message to convey and you need to list out some bullet points, multiple service lists, or just a large amount of text. If this is the case, just remember that the back of your vehicle is where your impression time will be increased. This is for obvious reasons. The back of your vehicle is where traffic behind will spend longer amounts of time than drivers passing by the sides. Use the sides of the vehicle to brand your company’s logo, phone number, web address and/or imagery. Use the back of the vehicle to spell out your complex messaging to the people that will have the time to absorb it.

8. High resolution is your friend, and so are vector illustrations.

You may or may not have experience with graphic design and resolution conversions of images or design elements. It is very important that you and your designer understand the difference between vector and raster based images, and how they are scaled to fit your design. Industry standard for vehicle wrap prints is 72 dpi printed at 720×720 resolution. Technical jargon isn’t it? Well, lets break it down. What you are looking at right now is 72 dpi. It’s sometimes called screen resolution. Offset printing is typically done at 150 dpi to 300 dpi. This is not necessary for vehicle wraps and digital printing. What this means in relation to the resolution of your stock photography is simply a bit of mathematics. While 72 dpi resolution is a suitable print resolution, you DO NOT want to go below as you will get grainy pixelated images on your wrap. So when your designer creates your wrap, you want to provide them with high resolution quality images. The mathematics involved are very simple and give you an idea of how large of an image you can yield from your stock photography. The equation goes something like this:

final size allowed (at 72 dpi) = current resolution / 72 * stock size

In simple terms, if you have an image that is 6″x6″ @ 144 dpi, you will be able to increase that image up to 12″x12″ at 72 dpi. That will be the largest size you can use to design your wrap.

This is for raster based images and designs ONLY. If your logo, design element, text, etc. is vector based, you will have no problems scaling them as large or as small as needed without any quality loss.

Long story short, make sure that your designer is not only aware of these terms, processes, and file types, but that you provide them with imagery and files that will meet these criteria.

9. Overlays, contours, and changing content.

Let’s face it, a wrap should last NO LESS than 3 years. Typically up to 5. If you own a fleet of vehicles, or you have vehicles that have specific text, or design elements, ask your designer about overlays for the changing text or elements. Overlays are typically text such as vehicle numbers, phone numbers, or other elements that are created from high performance cut vinyl and applyed over the wrap after it is installed. This provides several benefits to the finished product and you as the customer.

Allows text to be placed in a perfectly straight line over contoured surfaces after the wrap is installed
Allows one design to be created with different numbers, or elements for different vehicles saving the customer time and money
Allows certain elements of the design to be changed on the vehicles as time goes by to suite businesses that may change text, numbers, etc on a regular or scheduled interval Overlays are also useful to add reflective logos, text or elements to your wraps.

10. Paying for design.

Design rates typically range from $65 to $75 an hour. This is standard for any design firm and again, is a reason why you should only deal with a wrap firm that has a design background. If you are paying for it, you should get what you pay for. Some companies will throw in design, some will charge a flat rate, and some will bill hourly.

I always recommend that if paying for design, never agree to pay for anything other than hourly services. It is customary in this scenario for the designer to spec out a time frame estimate based on the vehicle and the customers needs. For a passenger vehicle, cargo van, or typical vehicle, this should be no more than 4-5 hours of time. Unless custom elements, illustration, or logo design are necessary, there is no reason a wrap should take longer to design.

If your firm requires a design charge, and you have agreed to the hourly model as I mentioned above, make sure that your wrap company bills you as an allowance for the design. Some firms may estimate you the 4-5 hours, when it may only take 2-3 hours time, and the balance of the monies are kept in the firm’s pocket. This is unethical and unnecessary. Trained graphic designers are accustomed to keeping accurate billing time tables for each project they work on. Any unused design time should be applied back to the final balance of the wrap.

Designing your own vinyl banner, custom magnetic or sign can be a great way to get exactly the final look you want. But remember – quite often your custom sign or banner is the first thing people see that is associated with your business, so a professional-looking readable design is of the utmost importance.

To help you get the most out of your custom banner design experience – whether using our graphic design services or your computer - Attention Getters has some design tips to help.

1. Choose appropriate font styles
Avoid using more than two type styles on a banner. The more fonts used, the harder it is to read. Sans serif fonts like Helvetica, Futura and Antique Olive are the easiest to view from a distance. They should be used for the primary message on banner. Likewise, serif fonts such as Goudy, Benguiat or Times are appropriate for a secondary message. Fonts such as Old English Text or Engraved are almost impossible to read correctly from a distance and should only be used when the viewer is stationary for a period of time (such as in a conference hall, meeting room or retail store) to be able to absorb the entire message at their own pace.

Take into account the type of business or event where the banner will be used. A bridal shop or beauty salon banner can be dressed up with a script font such as Brush or Commercial Script; however, these fonts would be out of place in an auto parts business.

Also, try to stay away from using all upper case lettering on your banner. It can be used for one word or a line of text for emphasis, however, it takes the human eye longer to read and process words in upper case.

2. Visibility
You can order your custom vinyl banner in a variety of sizes. Make sure you have chosen a size that is appropriate for the distance you expect your custom banner to be seen from. Consider where it will be located and what obstacles may be in the way. Readability is the most important part of your signage.

The following chart from the United States Sign Council (USSC) will help you to determine what size type is needed for your custom banner.



3. Overall Design
How do you plan to use your custom vinyl banner or any other product? Are you creating a custom sign that is event-specific or is it intended for use in a variety of settings? This can help you decide what text styles, colors and backgrounds you will want to use on your custom sign.

4. Less is More
When designing any signage less can be more! Leaving space around the edges and not filling the space completely with your text will add impact to what you do use on the banner. Put a minimum of information with some sort of contact information (like a phone number or web address) instead of everything about your event on your sign. Be concise but make sure needed information is included.

5. Photographs and Colors
Although Attention Getters can print your banner in full color giving you no limit to what you can do, choosing one color scheme and sticking with it can give your custom banner or sign a more finished look. Bright colors, patterns or images will draw attention to your sign, but overuse can take away from your message or make it hard to read. Using full color photographs is a great way to emphasize the main message on your custom sign.

Color combinations with high contrast between the background and letters are easier to read and can be viewed from greater distances. Always consider the type of business or event when choosing colors. Pink,purple, teal and orange colors aren't shown on this chart, but still can be used for certain holidays, special events or parties.

Highest visibility color combinations to use on your custom sign according to the Outdoor Advertising Assoc. of America (OAAA) is as follows:



Have fun with your banner or sign, but make it easy to read and appropriate for your target audience and your business. Every banner or sign that you use is a reflection on your company. If you want your custom banner or custom sign designed by one of our professionals, please contact us for a quote.

We just completed another mural at Toyota of El Cajon. Their service area wall is 16' high x 32' wide--a very large and intimidating space to work with! Toyota asked us for ideas of how to provide information for their customers when they drop off their vehicles and how to make it much more friendly and bright at the same time. After several artistic concepts, they decided on a yellow brick road theme.

We loved being able to help them with this hand-painted mural and provide a more inviting and relaxed environment for their customers. One of the reasons we like doing work for Toyota of El Cajon is that they are a completely eco-friendly dealership. We had to use low VOC paints to keep in line with what their mission is and it matches our mission as well to be an environmentally conscious business.

We seem to be getting a lot of inflatable domes and tents to paint lately. For Coke and Larger Than Life, it was two - 30' Coke igloos that will tour the U.S. during the heat of the summer at events sponsored by Coke-Cola.

We are always asked "how do you do that?" Well... it's a lot easier to paint before it is finished being sewn. That way we can get to all the parts of the project without having to rent a lift or climb all over ladders. This was a fun and challenging project! You can watch a video of us airbrushing and figuring out how to paint these giant inflatables here .

Attention Getters really amazed the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce with their incredible customer service; high-quality product; expedited production time and their amazing understanding and willingness to work with us. The product we received exceeded our expectations and really elevated our image to a whole new level. We now look crisp and professional – exactly the representation our organization was after. I would highly recommend Attention Getters to anyone in the market for their services.
 
Mike Cully
President & CEO
San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce

Before                                                                                                        Sign with the face lift

The San Diego East County Chamber asked us to ideas of how to spruce up their sign to last a few more years. The sign panels were worn out from continual sprinkler spray and exposure to the sun. We made new sign faces with a digital print and a UV protecting laminate applied to Alumalite, a sign material that lasts up to 10 years outdoors. We then repainted the frame and installed the new sign faces in its place. The result is a sign that reflects a more professional image for the Chamber. We are very happy for the opportunity to provide their new sign face lift!

One of the many fun projects we produce are inflatable costumes. We recently worked with Larger Than Life inflatables to produce this bright and fun bible costume. First the concept was made, then the side, back and front were digitally printed and laminated to protect the print. Finally the pages were airbrushed in to complete the look. We think it turned out great!

A fun project we just completed is a 25' sphere for the Winter Olympics. "Welcome" is written in 12 different languages all around the sphere and has a color fade from dark blue to light green behind white lettering. This large project took almost 100 people hours to complete and was made for Interactive Inflatables, Inc. Watch a video of the painting process from start to finish here, Welcome Sphere

Being a brand new Green Facility...we needed an art mural that fit our interior.  So I contacted Tracey at Attention Getters and asked her to meet me to assist with our mural.  Tracey brought a team of artists to our dealership and provided 4 options to meet our needs.  We chose one and it turned out fantastic. 

Thank you,

Michelle Candelaria
Toyota of El Cajon

Toyota of El Cajon recently contracted us to design and paint a 15' tall X 65' long wall mural with Toyota sayings. They just opened their new location on Arnele Street and have the distinction of being the first LEED Certified building in El Cajon, CA. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is a third-party certification program and nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. We naturally chose to use paints with no toxic fumes, or low VOC for the mural.

We designed the mural to compliment the other murals and decor they have in the newly designed building. The entire facility is quite impressive with numerous factoids explaining how energy efficient it is. Children will love to play on the life size pirate ship in the showroom area.

The wall mural is in an area where new owners pick up the keys to their car and drive off. It took three artists over four days to prep, paint, and complete the work on the mural. We are happy to be part of keeping their building "green." The finished mural looks great!