sponsorship decals?

[Rob Davies]

Just wondering what people do for decals to advertise their sponsors?

can you get special paper??? to put in a printer or do you get a third party company to make them (who?) or what?

As you can maybe tell, in recent years we have had minimal sponsorship and so are a little clueless...

We are an English team so any suppliers in the UK would be great.

Thanks, Rob

[D J Yates]

Hi Rob,

All our decals were made from vinyl. Don't know if you saw our car - no.13, looked a bit like a killer whale - the whole thing was painted black and the big white oval on the nose was all vinyl. The guy who did the job on our car was a profesional who cut every decal with a scalpel from sheets of vinyl, which he then just sticks onto the car. If your brave you could do this yourself or use a cutter similar to a PC printer. Although, i was told that the hardest part was sticking it onto the car without getting bumps a creases.

We'll probably be using the same guy again this year, but he is a friend of the team and so i'm not sure what he does comercially. You could try his website http://www.theartofspeed.co.uk for more info.

[flybywire]

We've always got someone who does decals to print up decals and then stuck them on ourselves.

Consequently, I have limited experience with the stuff when it comes to formula cars but I have seen some reasonable decal paper for inkjet printers. If I remember correctly you print it, then you seal the ink in with a coating of clear laquer from an areosol can, then you seperate the backing paper in water and then you very carefully stick the thing on.

Word of caution though. Inkjet printers are designed to print on a WHITE background and if you stick the resulting decals on any other colour you will *NOT* be pleased with what happens to your colours. (Inkjet inks are very translucent so that the printer can mix multiple layers of ink.) This situation alone is a great argument for getting professional one's made as the professional decals are opaque (and can be larger than A4!).

PS Also, ask your sponsors to send you a stack of any decals/stickers they might have. Most auto/racing companies already have some sort of decals. Hey, if you don't stick them to the car you can always stick them to your toolbox, above your bed or on your friends' butts.

[Matilda]

Laser cut stickers are cheap and do the job very easily. Just find someone to do it and give them you jpg or tiff files.

$2 - $5AUD for each sticker, and for text its really cheap, if its just one colour.

Jason

[Charlie]

In the states at least, small businesses that make vinyl decals are fairly common. We've had success promoting our vehicle as a showcase for thier work, in exchage for free decals. The decal stock itself is cheap, and the time cutting on the machine is (basically) free to the business. The machine itself is expensive, but it is a cheap opportunity for them to get thier name out in the community and beyond. Plus we've been able to always find someone who thinks racecars are cool. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

We applied the decals ourselves basically to save time; our sponsor had offered to do so. He gave us tips, and it worked out fine.

I chose a simple 2 color scheme, and I think it looked pretty good. Our sponsor could print full color stuff, but it would have been a lot more trouble and expense for them.

http://www.eng.auburn.edu/organizations/SAE/AUFSAE/acceleration1.jpg

[Chase]

another reason you might want to think about putting your own decals on is because sometimes you may want some sponsor decals to show up in a more visible spot for the level of donation etc. or you could just give the decal guy willing to do it a drawing of which sponsor goes where.

[jonno]

Brunel use Spyda's Web (http://www.spydas-web.co.uk/) to cut our sponsors logos. I'd advise against the chrome finish we had this year: the scrutineers didn't like them http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[syoung]

I thought they looked sweet! What did the scrutineers object to?

[J. Schmidt]

For less than $50 we got someone to make all the stickers made for our car, with some left over. We only had single color, two size fonts and it took less than a week. Another option is to use the stickers the sponsors give you. You know the stickers they expect you to put on your toolbox? Those work good in some cases, and the sponsors are happy to give up a whole stack of 'em! You should see my microwave, it's got a lot of racing stickers and now it cooks really fast.

[jonno]

the scrutineers disliked our logos on a number of levels
1) they thought the chrome would reflect the sunlight and temporarily blind track marshalls
2) thet thought our number 68 looked suspiciously like GB.....
hence the rule 3.6.1 this year about black on white or white on black stickers.