‘BARNFIND66’

European continental winners

Our first wrap for the car was created in 2017 and although we entered Avery Dennison’s Wrap Like a King we were not 100% satisfied with our final design. Certain elements didn’t look right, and we felt our efforts were not good enough. So, after much thought and research we decided to create a new wrap and in turn made the decision to enter Wrap Like a King again.

We all agreed that racing liveries were a popular theme in the wrapping world and with the already popular rust/distressed look we decided to combine these two themes. Researching 1970’s race car liveries we chose Paul Newman’s 1979 Datsun 280zx to base our design on. The reason for choosing this livery was that we could see the lines of the design would transfer and work well on our 350z.

To take the rust look one step further we then took the element of a ‘barn find’ and applied this idea to the racing livery. Jon our Graphic Designer, designed the basic graphics adding in the distressed and worn details - tyre marks, peeling paint, rust and even bird poop! The artwork was then printed on Avery Dennison 1105. Following a drying time of a week, the print was taken one step further: using sand paper and thinners, we scratched areas of the wrap to replicate ‘racing injuries’. Being a barn find there are some great details on the vehicle. For example, on the roof we added in paint pot marks and spillages. And to give the roof more design features we added texture to the bird poop by using acrylic paint under the laminate.  We took this concept one step further with the rear Datsun badge.  We hand painted the text with acrylic paint onto vinyl (in some areas this was over a 5-6 mm thick), allowing a month to dry. The text was hand cut and laid onto the printed template which was already wrapped on the car and then a final wrap was placed over it.  This gave the effect of an aged and shrunken logo. This for me is one of my favourite areas of the car.

We also wanted to show what you could do using clever design. The rear window of the 350z…is it the real thing? No its just a printed louvre giving a 3D effect….an idea we first used for Toyota GB:

http://media.toyota.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/HiluxTamiya-102-1000x666.jpg   

http://media.toyota.co.uk/image_library/toyota-hilux-bruiser-2017/

Last, but not least we then created the design for the wheels. On the original 1970’s Datsun the wheels were gold cross alloys. So, we used our FF logo, printed onto clear in a yellow gold tint and then placed this on Avery chrome wrap and bingo gold alloys achieved!

We entered Wrap Like a King 2018 and became runners up given 2018 European Continental winner. Didn’t quite make Global winner but we had a great experience in Las Vegas picking up our award! #wraplikeaking #WLAK