This Tale comes via a friend who has nothing whatsoever to do with the printing industry, nor does the person who passed the images you will see to him. As a result, it is short on words and long on visuals.

Wide format (and its big brothers super-wide and grand) printing are being used for a growing range of applications. We've all seen vehicle wraps, especially on quirky vehicles like Minis, New Beetles or Smart cars, or those you occasionally see on the vans of local tradesmen. Then there are companies who have wrapped buses or trucks in images representing their products, but these are usually little more than outsized images of products and logos and are little more than rolling billboards. Yawn.

Then there are the following seven images, all from Europe, that are visually compelling, outside-the-box creative --and potentially the cause of numerous major traffic accidents. I'm in the process of researching the companies involved and the print systems used and will hopefully be able to get back to you with more of the story. If you happen to know anything about these, please give me a shout! They appear to be mock-ups done to promote the goods of various companies by putting some extraordinary graphics on the sides of trucks. Some of the trailers are decorated to look as if the sides are missing and the products they are hauling are clearly visible from the sides and back. Others just simply grab your attention.

The bottle looks so real it appears to be coming out the side of the trailer.

A tote bag for those really big purchases.

Pepsi defies the laws of gravity.

Not sure I want to come up behind this on the A3 to Munich!

Do fish ever get motion sickness?

It's just amazing how that sticky note stays on!

I think the beer truck needs to follow this one down the road.

If you have a super-wide or grand printer, imagine how you could do something like one of these for your customers. With the technology available today there simply aren't too many excuses --other than lack of vision or imagination-- for not doing something that is beyond the ordinary, whether it in, on, or especially outside the box.