As we emerge post-COVID (no, we are not even remotely close to post-COVID), this is a good time for print businesses to take stock of their product and service offerings and look for new market opportunities. In a previous article, Pete Basiliere enumerated the opportunities in direct-to-shape printing. In this article, we’ll take a look at vehicle graphics. A lot of shops have been doing vehicle graphics for many years, and it’s certainly a more mainstream application than direct-to-shape or some other new areas like printed electronics. And as with virtually everything else in existence, the COVID pandemic has the potential to alter the market for vehicle graphics.

We’ve written often about new developments in vehicle graphics, but if they’re not something you’ve paid a lot of attention to, they’ve come a long way from those stick-on letters or magnetic signs you slapped on the side of a pick-up truck—or even those 1970s custom-painted van murals.

First, let’s back the car up a second. There are two basic markets for vehicle graphics—consumer and commercial. As the word suggests, “consumer” graphics are purchased by individual car owners for their private vehicles, while “commercial” vehicle graphics are applied to company vehicles. On the  consumer side, you occasionally see some striking vehicle graphics cruising the streets, but the biggest application for consumer vehicle graphics is simple color changes. Once upon a time, if you wanted to change the color of your car, or if the auto dealership didn’t have the color you wanted, it would have to be repainted. Today, car color changes are done with wraps, which has the added benefit of making further color changes relatively easy and inexpensive, should a car owner tire of their car’s hue. Car owners also often request other decorative effects such as smoked taillights, tinted headlights, and blacking out chrome. There are also transparent plastic films such as Clear Bra that are applied to protect a car’s paint job from road debris and other damage.