Wraps, partial wraps and look-like-a-wraps

By signcraft

Posted on Friday, November 21st, 2025

Vehicle wraps are a hot item—and a powerful tool in the hands of a good designer. With a wrap, you can create a custom paint scheme for a fleet of vehicles, add the look of custom paint behind the graphics or get the drama of bold images—like the smiling kid looking back at you through his swim goggles.

Wraps for a cause

When Jocelin Snow, Snow Signs, Salinas, California, was setting up her wrap business, Krazy Wraps, she spent some time at 360Wraps.com in Dallas, Texas, with Tommy Strader learning more about this aspect of the sign business.

While she was there, she discovered their Wrap Buddies project [www.wrapbuddies.com], a free-of-charge, non-profit service to wrap the helmets worn by children to correct the shape of their skull.

She decided she wanted to get involved with this work, too. Tommy has wrapped over 1000 helmets—plus prosthetics and wheelchairs and other things for kids who are facing challenges.

“The helmets look like a medical device,” says Jocelin, “and the wrap takes away that look. It really means a lot to families, and the kids get excited about all the colors.

“Here in California, the doctors use a variety of different helmets, so you can spend some time creating templates.

“It has to be worn by the child 23 hours a day, so that gives us one hour to knock out the installation. We take some measurements, then I usually tell them to go down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium while we do the design, print and laminate it. When they get back, we take it off and wrap it while they watch. It’s a lot of fun and a neat thing to do.”

A wrap can let you transform a truck or van and squeeze extra impact from the graphics by using more than just a door or a body panel. Sign designers have always looked for ways to use the entire vehicle as the format, but printed wraps have made that more practical.

Wraps have also opened clients’ eyes to the fact that you don’t have to keep the lettering on the door. Treating the whole vehicle as a sign is possible even when wrapping isn’t an option. The extra visual impact of this approach can turn a vehicle into a rolling billboard, rather than just identify it.

And trucks and vans aren’t all that gets wrapped these days. Anything and everything gets wrapped. The photos we receive here at SignCraft are proof of that. We hope these examples spark some ideas for new designs—and new applications—for you.

This appeared in the May/June 2014 issue of SignCraft.

Ray and Cam Sauder, Raynbow Signs, Palmerston, Ontario, Canada

Erik Dickson, Erik Designs, Rumford, Maine

Kevin Wright, Wright Signs, Adrian, Michigan

Mark Agnew, Agnew Graphics, Owosso, Michigan, wrapped this casket for a Coca-Cola memorabilia collector who was battling cancer and doing end-of-life planning.