Signs of the Times - July 2012 - (Page 16)

VINYL APPS By Steve Aust “We looked around at other food trucks and noticed they had more complex designs. We thought this would create greater attention, and generate more customers.” A Food Truck HAPA-ning The Bay Area’s CV Wraps decorates a Filipino-cuisine vendor’s vehicle. ike Joseph Kony or Fifty Shades of Grey, food trucks have quickly progressed from obscurity to a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon. However, unlike the first two examples, food trucks are likely to withstand public opinion’s fickle nature because of the sheer diversity of cuisine offered by an armada of mobile-food vendors. Their itinerant nature, and accompanying frenzy of social-media updates, appeal to younger generations of diners (and, a fun food truck leaves a more positive, permanent impression than news of a delusional despot or mommy porn). Even in frumpy Cincinnati, where Mark Twain appropriately said he’d like to be when the Apocalypse occurs because things happen 20 years later here, food trucks are common sites – and lunchtime destinations – on downtown streets, and were embraced as part of the Queen City’s longstanding Memorial L Day-weekend Taste of Cincinnati Festival. Conversely, trendsetting San Francisco, expectedly, resides on the leading edge of the food-truck boom. According to Greg Gless from www.roaminghunger.com, a website that tracks food-truck activity across the U.S., 175 food trucks operate in the city. Custom Vehicle (CV) Wraps (San Francisco), which wrapped such high-profile projects as the truck that carried the San Francisco Giants’ World Series Trophy across California (see ST, March 2011, page 55), has emerged as one of the Bay Area’s leading food-truck-wrap providers. Kwasi Boyd, the company’s marketing manager, astutely purchased three appropriate URLs: foodtruckwrap.com, foodtruckwraps.com and foodtruckfabrication.com. To date, he said the shop has decorated 35 food trucks. William and Olivia Pilz, the William and Olivia PIlz, the owners of HAPA SF, a food truck that serves organic Filipino cuisine made from locally sourced ingredients, contacted Custom Vehicle (CV) Wraps Inc. (San Francisco) to have an updated wrap made for its truck. This new, 600-sq.-ft. wrap provides curb appeal that will help them sell pancit, sisig and other, exotic delicacies. 16 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / JULY 2012 / www.signweb.com husband-and-wife owner of HAPA SF, a food truck that serves organic, Filipino dishes, connected with CV Wraps through Off the Grid, San Francisco’s largest foodtruck-event producer. Although the dishes HAPA serves are highly regarded, its prior wrap was comparatively spartan and didn’t create curb appeal (where are first impressions more important than with a quickservice food truck?). “We looked around at other food trucks and noticed they had more complex designs,” Olivia said. “We thought this would create greater attention, and generate more customers.” The Pilzes enlisted Aron Paul, a photographer and graphic artist, to craft a new design for HAPA’s truck. The new design prominently displays vibrant graphics and the names of Filipino delicacies it serves – such as sisig, a pork, jalapeno and lime concoction – above the service window. CV’s design team refined and made it wrap-ready using Adobe Photoshop. To render graphics for the 22-ft.-long truck, the installation crew took measurements and plugged them into a digitized template. Before CV could boost HAPA’s brand with its new wrap, removal of existing graphics proved to be the job’s biggest obstacle. “The prior graphics were installed two years before, but the adhesive was so embedded into the surface that it seemed like it was there longer,” Boyd said. “Acetone and Goof-Off® [heavy-duty removal compound] worked at dissolving the residue. But, because this step took a lot longer than the typical, two-hour removal, we had to take breaks because working around the solvent fumes was making us dizzy.” The prior graphics’ removal would http://www.roaminghunger.com http://www.foodtruckwrap.com http://www.foodtruckwraps.com http://www.foodtruckwrap.com http://www.foodtruckfabrication.com http://www.signweb.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signs of the Times - July 2012

Signs of the Times - June 2012
Contents
ST Update
Technology Update
Vinyl Apps
Strictly Commercial
Lighting Techniques
The Moving Message
Technology Review
Technology Review
Vehicle Graphics Contest Extension
New Products
The American Sign Museum Opens!
An Electric-Sign Company Snapshot
By Print or by Paint
Extreme Installs
Lessons for the Boss
The Value of Signs
Advertising Index
Editorially Speaking

Signs of the Times - July 2012