Creating Your Wrap Design
It’s important to create a brand identity for your food truck that customers will recognize and connect with. How it looks and what it says on your wrap should convey the style of food your customers can expect to receive and the attitude that inspires your culinary creations. If properly advertised the food and message behind it can lead to great things! Some food trucks go on to opening brick + mortar locations and get featured on TV or in prominent news sources. Next are some tips for creating the branding and wrap design for your food truck.
1. Core Values
Everything starts with your values because it dictates how you represent yourself. This is important since people tend to buy things that resonate with them more.
When our team worked with Taste-D-Burger we noticed their brand identity was about a family, local STL pride, hard-work, and a commitment to flavor. Their food truck wrap visually represented these beliefs and expressed them to potential customers. Their old branding displayed the light hearted approach, but it certainly didn’t share who they were as a business.
2. Messaging
All of the text on your food truck should accurately relate to the values we mentioned as well as the product you intend to offer. Text should be fairly limited on a food truck leaving more space for captivating imagery. That being said there are some important pieces of text that should be included on your wrap.
- Slogan: Try to think of a short catchy phrase related to your values or product offering. This a good way to help people remember you and form a community around you’re food truck. If you’re having trouble thinking of something try listing keywords first and then piecing something together. Branded #hastags can also be useful for spreading the word on social platforms.
- Contact Info: Make sure to include important info like your website, phone, and social media handles on your wrap. This is important in generating leads for people that want to invite you to events as well as updating your advocates on where you’ll be next. Most of the time people put this under the window or by the door.
- Menu: We actually DO NOT recommend putting your menu on the wrap since certain items can change frequently or run out. It’s much better to have a large and easy to read sign that you can stand up by the order window or attach to your truck. If you do add a menu to your wrap keep it by the order window and make it legible.
3. Imagery
There are a ton of ways you can create a visual identity. There are monograms, wordmarks, or a logo mark which TailorBrand describes well on their website. Past the logo there are brand assets such as types of fonts and other illustrations used to showcase your style.
- Avoid Clutter: Don’t crowd your food truck with lots of words or illustrations this makes it hard to read from a distance. It can also confuse customers as they try to figure out what kind of food you make and who you are.
- Logo: Make sure you have your branding consistent with your wrap, website, socials, and merch. This keeps everything connected so people can recognize and find you easier.
- Style: There are lots of different art styles such as cartoonish, classy, punk, cultural, etc… Find one that you feel fits your branding and message.
- Illustration: It usually helps to have some main image other than a logo to showcase more character and personality in your business. Just as long as it makes sense with your brand.
- Pattern: Often times patterns are used as an effect in the background that keeps wraps from being too flat. It should not be distracting from text or take away from the focal point of your truck which is either the logo or illustration.
For Taste-D-Burger the city of St. Louis flag is used to create a local tie. The flag design is great because it draws attention to the focal point which is the logo. Highlighting the burger clearly states the type of food served on the truck. It’s soft and rounded logo design is welcoming and light-hearted making it easily approachable to more family oriented crowds.
4. Color Theory
When you think about ways to convey something visually you only have so much to work with. We talked about text and images, but the last things is color. People associate color with feelings and certain color schemes are more pleasing than others all based in color theory.
- Color Scheme: Make sure you are using colors that go together. There is a science to it! This will help the perception of your truck and make it standout with more visual appeal.
- Look Different: You can’t stand out from the competition if you look exactly like them… Try to research food trucks in your area to see if anyone offers similar food or uses the same colors. Be sure you are different enough, after all you want to be recognized and remembered – not mistaken for someone else.
- Contrast: Be sure your design uses a good mix of light and dark colors so that nothing is to difficult to read especially text.
For Taste-D-Burger their brand colors are blue, yellow, orange and white. This was actually great because blue complements both orange and yellow nicely! We opted for lighter tones of these colors to reinforce the warm and welcoming attitude. It’s also worth mentioning that colors like red, orange, and yellow tend to provoke hunger which is why food companies like McDonald’s use them.
5. Measurements
Getting the proper measurements for your food truck is absolutely critical. Make sure that whoever is designing your food truck can have time to measure it, so that graphics are properly sized. If there are no measuring services available then be sure that they have the correct line drawing for your vehicle make and model.
Designing the wrap for a food truck is a daunting task because all the features on a vehicle need to be taken into account. You have to measure windows, curves, small angles, and make sure you leave enough bleed to where the design isn’t cut short. It’s important to have good mockups when designing art to fit properly on the vehicle.
Looking To Design A Vehicle Wrap?
We offer in-house design services where we can work together to make your vision come to life. Your wrap is gonna be some of the best money spent on your food truck since its appearance can have a big factor in making those crucial sales.
