Buyer Beware! The vehicle wrap industry is cutthroat...

Take a closer look at that vehicle wrap

Take a closer look at the competitions vehicle graphics and you will find quite often they don't look so great within 1-2 feet. Our vehicle graphics look good at any distance and are often mistaken for paint. Be sure to look up close for banding (lines running through the prints) as well as pixelization. These are just some things caused by older or cheap printers and low resolution printing. Walk around and inspect for seams and look close at the edges for clean trimming and adhesion. Ask your potential wrap company to see their printer. If the company offering vehicle wrap services does not have thier own large format printer that you can visually see be skeptical. Vehicle wrap companies like this outsource their printing and most of the time have absolutley no control over the print environment and output color. You best bet if you are getting a vehicle wrap is once the vehicle wrap is designed ask for a color sample on the same material your vehicle wrap will be printed on. Any real vehicle graphics company should be able to provide this within 10-30 minutes.

A major overlooked cause to vehicle wrap and print failure is the print environment. Large format vehicle wrap printers should be contained in thier own room and temperature controlled to a specific degrees. There are many more printing factors that will effect your wrap print quality that Awthentik Graphics keeps secret. If we shared all of our vehicle wrap techniques people might try and duplicate our unique quality and high definition vehicle wraps. Just know that we are photographic experts and have the highest quality and color control known to the vehicle graphic industry.

Are there wrapped vehicles on site? If not then what do you have to examine and compare with other potential design companies? Any vehicle wrap company should have wrapped vehicles on site and if they don't it says a lot about them. Just the other day I saw another vehicle wrap company van driving down the freeway and thier logo spanned the whole rear of the van. Well, this might have been ok except the rear of the van had a license plate on the right side along with a plastic insert where almost 1/3 of the companies logo was cut out and illegible. Poor design was the cause of this along with horrible installation. Look at the wrap companies vehicles because if they are missing text due to design and have a bad installation you could be the next potential victim.

Watch out for unqualified printers

Just because a company buys a large format printer does not mean they know how to use it. I have personally spoken with several vehicle wrap companies regarding print format and consulted with some about setting up computers and profiling. To my amazement all of the vehicle wrap companies I spoke with had no idea how to correctly run thier printers, how to properly profile, or even know that you could callibrate your monitors. Out all of the things I suggest you ask your potential vehicle wrap company, ask them if they calibrate thier monitors for color and if they say yes ask them with what. If they can't show you a device I would not reccomend using them to print because there is no way they can control the output of thier colors whether it was your artwork or thier supplied graphics.

You get what you pay for. What is a warranty worth to you?

It's true, you really do get what you pay for in this industry. Cheap does equal bad vehicle wraps because the quality of the material and the vehicle wrap materials manufacturer warranty means everything to the overall finished product you might purchase. Design, print, installation and adhesion all play a factor in your vehicle wrap. Getting any of these "cheap" could effect the final vehicle wrap product. Our vehicle wraps are affordable, high quality and have the best manufacturer's warranty out of every material available on the market. When pricing different companies to get a vehicle wrap ask yourself what a warranty means to you. A bad warranty could cause your vehicle wrap to fade within a year leaving your company with an old looking, battered wrap that directly affects the image of how your company is portrayed.

Can they really design it?

Look at your designer's portfolio. So many people think just because somebody has a graphic design business card, or a storefront that they are qualified designers. Over the years we have interviewed and reviewed many people that claimed to be designers. Most of them paid tens of thousands of dollars for art school to obtain a bachelors degree in design. Here is the problem. They can't design! Many of the trade schools out there take $40,000-50,000 to "teach" design to thier students and the reality of it is that you can not be taught something that requires an artistic eye. Awthentik Graphics only hires natural artists and you will find in working with us that we can create anything that your mind can think up.

Business card, flyers, and other printing services

The quality or printing does matter to your companies image. Ask to see samples other than the companies personal printwork. Look to see if they are cut right and the text is not crooked or clipped off in any way. Ask your printer if they print process or digital. Digital business card and flyer printing is the worst type of printing you can get because digitally printed business cards can wear fast and have limited lightfast. Our process is 4 color for all of our paper printed products and that ensures your finished product will have the best quality.