Designer Wraps & Films on Putting Design First 

In Pitman, New Jersey, Sean Tomlin, the owner and president of Designer Wraps & Films, approaches his business not only as a print professional but as a design and branding expert. While a successful vehicle wrap can mean many things, from crisp prints to a smooth install, the branding and design of a wrap can make or break it. Vehicle wraps aim to inform and advertise, and if the branding is off, it can fall flat for viewers, impacting the business.

Getting to Know the Customer’s Business

Before any designing or planning can happen on a project, there’s a period of discovery where shops gather all the necessary details about their customer’s business. At Designer Wraps & Films, Tomlin uses a five-page design questionnaire and creative brief to gather this information. It covers the basics like wrap specs and requirements but also asks questions like:

• “Are you open to a brand restyle that is disruptive?”
• “Do you have any catchphrases/tagline?”
• “What colors do you use within your company?”
• “What is your business known for?”
• “Who are your main competitors?”

These questions guide the team on the route they’ll take with a job, and gauge how much creative freedom they’ll have while also delivering on customer expectations.

Zeroing in on exactly how Designer Wraps & Films offers branding as a service, Tomlin shares the details of a food truck project where his team built out the entire brand, from the name to the mascot. This was the first time the shop executed a complete brand restyle and design in addition to the actual wrap.

Tomlin didn’t know it at the time, but this project would change his feelings on the infamous saying, “The customer is always right.”

Smackin' Lobster Food Truck Wrap

The customer, a chef, wanted to start a new venture and take his business on the road with a food truck. “His original concept was Emilio's International House of Lobster,” Tomlin explains. “So, right away, we're like, ‘Man, that's a pretty long name, but okay, if that's what you want, let's start heading in that direction.’”

The team took the customer’s ideas and came up with some vintage designs with different styles of lobsters. Several iterations later, Tomlin knew something wasn’t right. The name didn’t make sense for a food truck.

That’s when Tomlin knew a project like this required conversation beyond an email thread. The customer came in for his first in-person meeting to go over the questionnaire, and Tomlin says this was when the good ideas started to float to the surface, including a new name that rolled off the tongue. Meetings like these show the power of in-person interaction where collaborative brainstorming can take place.

Tomlin asked the customer what made his lobster roll different, digging for something that would spark some creative ideas. The customer said it was so good that people were smacking their lips. That’s when the light bulb went off, and Tomlin came up with Smackin’ Lobster. Without that in-person conversation, diving into the ins and outs of each question and understanding the client’s business, the food truck’s branding would have looked much different.

To get to the right place, customers need to know their end goals for their company and brand. Tomlin says sometimes that means reeling the customer in who has a million ideas, while other times it’s a struggle to complete the questionnaire and get the answers. Either way, the customer is coming to you, the print provider, because you’re the expert in making it all come to life.

“We are the professionals in this space, and we have, I think, an obligation to tell the customer whether their brand is any good or not,” he argues. “Will it do what you want it to do?” And if it doesn’t, he says, it’s his job to figure out how to make it better. He tells other shops to apply outside branding knowledge to the project, and even use big brands as exemplary works to showcase what works and what doesn’t.

Without helpful tools like a design questionnaire and a first meeting to pull that information from the customer, Tomlin says it’s a waste of time to start anything.

Sean Tomlin, owner and president of Designer Wraps & Films, says a brand creation project like this takes about three weeks. | Credit: Designer Wraps & Films

“This guy happened to be a startup, so it was a little bit easier,” Tomlin says of Smackin’ Lobster. “But when established companies are coming in for a rebrand, they have a lot to consider. They have a lot of changes to make after the fact, so it takes a little bit longer.”

Setting Boundaries and Expectations

Because big decisions like branding can take time, and in some cases, several design iterations, it’s important for PSPs to have open communication and set expectations with customers about design changes.

Asking what Designer Wraps & Films “cut-off point” is for design changes, Tomlin says his shop is still learning but tries to follow a general rule:

“I don't like to present more than four different variations of the brand,” he shares. “And even then, we try to say, when we're doing a presentation, ‘Here are three to four different things. Remember this meeting and think about the one that stood out the most to you initially. What was it about this logo that jumped? Because inevitably you're going to take this back. You're going to show it to your colleagues, you're going to show it to your staff, you're going to show it to your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, all these different people, and everybody's going to have a different opinion.’”

The longer a business sits on a design, the muddier the waters become, and sometimes there are too many cooks in the kitchen, he says. It clouds judgment, the customer becomes more unsure, and then seemingly endless changes and iterations ensue.

Picking one design from a few gives the print provider, designers, etc. enough direction to move forward. “When we're able to do that successfully, it speeds up the process without sacrificing quality,” he adds. “We try to steer them to the one that we think will benefit them the most, and a lot of times it ends up being that one because it makes the most sense for the particular customer.”

Making Design a Line Item

Part of getting design and branding right is about education, and Tomlin says that’s something he’s leaned on heavily. He encourages shops to learn from industry peers: “I'll bring Dan Antonelli and his business KickCharge into the conversation because he is a huge, huge proponent of brand and design in this industry. I would say educate yourself as much as possible. Read Dan’s books; watch his YouTube videos; join The Wrap Institute. He has a special class in there that you can pay for and have your entire design team do a one-on-one with him via Zoom, and he will educate your team. Have your salespeople in there as well. You can learn so much from this man.”

And it’s not just reading the book, taking the class, and putting that information on the proverbial shelf. It’s about putting the knowledge into practice. That’s what Designers Wraps & Films has done over the last couple of years, specifically putting Antonelli’s notes on pricing into practice.

“He's constantly talking to people about putting design first and charging for it,” Tomlin explains. “A lot of times, unfortunately in this industry and coming out of the sign industry too, a lot of these companies, they don't charge for design.”

Looking at an invoice, a company might charge $5,000 for a food truck wrap, and that’s all that’s on the invoice. What about the design? How much does that cost? Tomlin says when shops include design in the wrap price, it devalues their work and the design itself.

For something like the Smackin’ Lobster project — an entire brand creation — pricing can be tricky. Does it come down to creative hours spent, or is something like this better offered in a package price? Asking how Designer Wraps & Films approaches the pricing dance, Tomlin says he’s been playing with a few different approaches over the last two years.

“You got to kind of figure out, how many hours could this potentially take?” he says. “OK, there's a starting point. What's your rate? Is it $75 an hour or is it $125 an hour? Multiply that, and then maybe there's your starting point? What I also learned from going through the process with KickCharge and our rebrand is you pay for the brand separately. Separate from the wrap design, separate from any collateral, separate from the website, separate from everything else.”

Talking about charging for taglines, Tomlin says he doesn't currently charge extra for that, but as the shop grows in its branding services, he plans to make that it's own line item as well.

“If it's naming the company, we're kind of on the fence right now with that," he continues. "That could potentially be a different price. But certainly, any sort of design work outside of the brand itself is a separate line item and that's just design. They're just paying for the brand, the tagline. The wrap design itself, if it's a commercial van or something, then they pay separate for the wrap or the sign or whatever else they need. So, it's creating a premium on design.”

While this might seem daunting, Tomlin says you have to start somewhere. PSPs need to be confident in their design work and take the leap. If they're not confident enough in their work, it's smart to hire a freelance designer or bring someone in-house who understands both branding and wrap design.

"We want to be proud of the work that we do,” Tomlin says. “We’re not helping anybody if we're just putting out garbage that you can't read driving down the road.”

Credit: Designer Wraps & Films