#1 Graphic Design and Installation in Dallas-Fort Worth
#1 Graphic Design and Installation in Dallas-Fort Worth
There comes a point where cut vinyl cannot do what your brand needs. A gradient in the logo. A drop shadow. A photograph of the product. An illustrated mascot with forty shades in it. Cutting that from solid film is either technically impossible or costs more in labour than printing it would.
Print and cut solves it. The artwork is printed in full colour, laminated, then contour-cut precisely around its outline so it applies to the vehicle with no visible background. You get photographic detail with the same clean edge as cut lettering. Part of our fleet graphics range.
Multi-colour logos. Anything with gradients, shading, transparency, or more than about four colours.
Product photography. Food trucks showing what they sell, delivery vehicles showing the product, nurseries and landscapers showing plants and finished gardens.
Before-and-after imagery. Roofers, remodellers, pressure washing companies, and detailers get real mileage out of this. A driveway before and after on the side of a truck is a better sales pitch than any tagline.
Franchise artwork. Where the brand file must be reproduced exactly and cannot be simplified into cut colours.
Illustrated characters and mascots. Which are common in pest control, plumbing and home services and which cut vinyl handles badly.
Trailer graphics. Large flat surfaces with photographic areas, which is where print and cut is at its most cost-effective per square foot.
Think of print and cut as the middle step, typically $400 to $1,200. Your full brand identity reproduced properly, applied to the door panels, rear doors and any accent areas, without the cost of covering the whole vehicle in film.
A lot of our contractor clients land exactly here and stay for years. They get a truck that looks fully branded, at roughly a third of what a full wrap costs, and when the vehicle is replaced they are not writing off a large investment.
Every printed vehicle graphic that leaves this shop has a cast overlaminate over it. This protects against UV fading, fuel splash, insect residue, road grit and car wash brushes.
We have been asked to skip it to save money, and we do not. An unlaminated print on a Texas vehicle looks visibly tired within one summer and dead within two, at which point the client is paying twice. The laminate is a small fraction of the job cost and it is the difference between five years and eighteen months.
Vector logo files are ideal (AI, EPS or PDF with outlined fonts). For photographic elements, we want 100 to 150 dpi at the final printed size, which for a 24-inch graphic means a reasonably large original file.
If you only have a JPEG of your logo pulled off an old website, send it anyway. Peyton vectorizes or redraws artwork routinely, and we would rather rebuild it properly than print a soft, pixelated version of it at two feet wide where every flaw is visible.
Applied indoors on cleaned, solvent-wiped panels. Contour cut graphics apply much like lettering, with the added care that large printed areas need careful squeegee work to avoid trapped air.
Laminated print and cut on cast vinyl runs 5 to 7 years, with around 5 being realistic for a vehicle that lives outdoors in Collin County. Panels facing west fade first.
Yes. Print and cut graphics reproduce photographs, gradients, and fine detail in full colour, then contour cut around the outline so there is no visible background panel. iCandy Grafix laminates every printed vehicle graphic to protect it from UV, fuel splash, and washing.
Laminated print and cut graphics on cast vinyl last 5 to 7 years, with around 5 years realistic for vehicles parked outdoors daily in North Texas. Lamination is the deciding factor, and unlaminated prints fade visibly within a single summer.
Cut vinyl is cheaper and ideal for text and simple one- or two-colour logos. Printed graphics are necessary for gradients, photographs, and detailed artwork. Most vehicles use both, with cut lettering for the contact details and printed graphics for the logo mark.
Vector files are best for logos, and photographic elements should be 100 to 150 dpi at final printed size. If you only have a low-resolution logo, iCandy Grafix can vectorize or redraw it, and we will tell you whether a supplied image will hold up at size before printing rather than after.
Generally not directly. Vinyl over vinyl does not bond reliably and creates a visible edge. If you are updating a wrapped vehicle, the affected panel usually needs the old film removed first, which we quote separately.
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