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Creative Color’s owner describes its wrap process.

By Brent Luther

The Creative Color (Burnsville, MN) team recently developed a unique vehicle-wrap concept for a longstanding client, Wild Bill’s Sports Saloon (www.wildbillssportssaloon.com). This western-themed, sports bar and grill offers such tasty grub as burgers, ribs, flatbread pizzas and wings at affordable prices.
Wild Bill’s provides a cozy, saloon atmosphere. Aged-pine boards line interior walls; pitched-tin awnings protrude over booths, and a beautiful bottle display behind the bar dates back to the frontier era. It operates three Minneapolis locations -- Apple Valley, Maple Grove and Blaine – but had a primary goal of boosting catering sales at its Maple Grove location.

Over the past few years, we’ve created an original logo, fabricated LED-lit channel letters, printed menus and created interior graphics for Wild Bill’s owner. We were excited to further brand their business with distinctive mobile advertising.

Last year, we collectively discussed doing a full vehicle wrap on one of Wild Bills catering vehicles. When a business owner has never purchased a full vehicle wrap, the widespread exposure it will provide -- especially for a restaurant -- can be difficult for them to grasp. We proposed a high-impact, full wrap that depicts Wild Bill’s fare so viewers would get hungry at first sight. The customer offered some beautiful food photography, and we went to work.

Mouth-watering design
The client delivered a 2005 Chevy Astro Van for us to wrap. Its straightforward design was relatively simply to wrap, and we enjoyed working on a vehicle with a few nicks and scratches. A full wrap would make this van look brand-new again!

Using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS5, I began creating a collage design. The large Wild Bill’s logo became the focal point, with crisp images rounding out the scene. Working with high-resolution photos of onion rings, ribs and fresh burgers with bacon made me hungry!

I designed the full wrap to fade to black edges on the top and sides, which effectively blend all elements together. I maintained consistency with the background’s “vintage” wood feel, and maximized the logo’s impact by scaling it across the vehicle’s sides. It was a time-consuming, seven-hour process to integrate the images, text, logo and background, but the end result’s pop made it more than worthwhile.