The most common ways to use them

Graphics for cars and other vehicles can involve a number of different uses, especially as you’re able to personalise them with your own artwork and finishing options. You can use them as car advertising stickers to promote your own business or brand. This may involve showcasing a promotional message to pedestrians or other motorists, or it may even involve adding your business brand to your car so it looks like a professional business vehicle. By covering thousands of miles, you could expose your brand or advertising message to thousands of people who could all be potential customers. This is a fantastic way to get highly cost-effective exposure.

You can also make your own car sticker so it adds graphical elements to your vehicle purely for aesthetic purposes. Car sticker printing used in this manner can really add that “wow” factor and allow you to tailor the overall look to your tastes far more than just a normal paint job. You can add different vehicle window stickers, graphics, decals, bumper stickers and other touches to really make your vehicle your own. Best of all, whilst they create a permanent result, they can also be carefully removed if required. This may be important if you ever intend to eventually sell your vehicle. To buy full colour car stickers and graphics online which give you top quality and a wide range of customisation features without the hefty price tag, start by choosing from the options above.

History of Vehicle Stickers

Bumper stickers have been around since the 1940s, when vinyl producers began to look for commercial outlets for their product after the second world war. One theory is that the first one advertised a tourist attraction, Rock City in Georgia, USA. The attraction was promoted in the region by signs painted on barn roofs, reading ‘See Rock City’, and some time in the 1940s the slogan was replicated on vehicle stickers for tourists to buy and take away. They were particularly popular in America in 2013, the Michigan House of Representatives repealed a law that had stood since 1929 in the State, forbidding people to display stickers on their car for an organisation or club they didn’t actually belong to. The law had been unenforced for decades, but until it was overturned, it was technically illegal to display them for a sports team unless you played for that team!

In the 1960s, as car traffic on European roads was booming, the UN introduced a new system for identifying the nationalities of cars at a glance. The now familiar signs displaying country codes were attached to the backs of cars. Racing cars have used vehicle stickers for some time; they tend to be lighter than paint and so offer the opportunity to display team branding and lucrative advertising on a car without a serious effect on efficiency. In motor racing and motorcycle racing it’s now common to see vehicles covered with them advertising a number of brands. In the 1990s, vehicle sticker technology developed further to allow vehicle wrapping – applying large vinyl sheets over a partial or entire surface of a vehicle. It is now common to see cars, planes, buses and trains entirely wrapped in vinyl and used as a moving billboard, reaching a wider audience than traditional static advertising. (One study estimated that a single car in the USA displaying advertising stickers could reach an audience of 30,000 to 70,000 people in a day.)

Businesses now routinely use vehicle stickers (wraps) to advertise on their fleet such as cars and vans. They are being used in increasingly creative ways, for example, making it appear as if a man smoking a cigarette is exhaling smoke through an exhaust pipe (a stop smoking advert) or crushed by a giant boa constrictor (Copenhagen Zoo advert). UK estate agent chain Foxtons are known for their creative fleet wrapping, and their yearly roll-outs of new eye-catching vehicle sticker designs have become iconic on the streets of London, and have featured artwork inspired by space rockets, x-rays and punk style. Vehicle wraps are now so sophisticated that they can be used to entirely change the colour of a car, and in the UK, the DVLA now require that full wraps are officially reported as a change of colour, in the same way as repainting.

Vehicle wrapping has until recently been a primarily commercial activity, used by businesses to advertise services, but it is now increasingly being used to customise them as a luxury accessory. TV shows such as the US ‘Pimp My Ride’ have boosted the popularity of consumer wraps, allowing people to have whatever they want printed. There’s even an official Global Wrap Cup in which specialists compete for the honour of being the world’s best wrapper! But for small businesses, more straightforward vehicle stickers are often the cheapest and simplest solution, allowing easy application and removal. They can be used to display anything from simple contact information for tradesmen to company logos or larger scale images that promote a business’s work.