July 13, 2020

Blackheath based BMD Signs and Wraps delivers a really inventive livery that has heads turning…

BMD Signs and Wraps has an interesting past. Bespoke Model Designs, as it was once known, began its career designing large-scale model aircraft and supplying custom graphics to clients that were not happy with the OEM ones that came with RC Kits. On its way to its current premises, the company was based at Halfpenny Green Airport and made graphics for full size aircraft too, including helicopters, as well as making all of the airport’s health and safety signage.

BMD Signs has a bright future as well as an interesting past. It’s now comfortably accommodated in sizeable premises in Blackheath, and can take on equally sizeable projects. One vehicle or a fleet of fifty - either way, the company prides itself on delivering what its customers want and on its versatility. True to say, at BMD Signs and Wraps, they never know quite what is going to come through the door.

One day, not so long ago, Haunted Evenings Events Ltd., better known as ‘Haunted Evenings’ to its regulars made its presence known to Robbie Skipton and the team at BMD. The company delivers quality ghost investigations at different locations throughout the UK. They wanted a branded livery for the vehicle they use to transport clients to the investigations’ sites. Clearly, this livery needed to be right on song with the client’s business, but that business was about as far removed from the more commonly encountered trades that come to BMD as it’s possible to be. Just how do you brand a vehicle belonging to a ghost investigations business?

Brilliantly, it turns out.

Haunted Evenings’ customers take their work seriously and they’re well looked after. It’s not about skulking around a corner and waiting for someone to say “boo,” clients go armed behind an arsenal of serious ghost hunting hardware including night-vision goggles, thermal imaging systems and K2s in addition to more traditional tools such as communication boards and dowsing rods.

BMD Signs was given a brief that in effect prescribed the logo and little else. Amber Whitehouse, BMD’s designer established a grounding theme founded on chillingly cool colours that resonated with the logo, and with faces extensively edited to achieve an effect that is unmistakably otherworldly. Something like six iterations of the design were made before the winning formula was rubber-stamped.

The main elements of the stunning livery are printed on MetaWrap MD-X. In keeping with the design’s overall goals and feel, this is about subtle suggestion so there’s not a lot of ink. What there is though is brilliantly resolved and it really brings the ghostly design to, ahem, life. The livery’s knockout punch though is saved for the vehicle’s windows.

The windows are fitted with Metamark ClearVision panels printed with echoes of the main design. This product is normally specified where graphics are applied to a window and a view through from the inside out must be maintained. On this occasion, the material plays an equally inventive role in being slightly see-through from the exterior too and this gives the ghostly renderings an even more subtle transparency that will vary with the light. It’s a stunning ensemble overall and a brilliant example of livery promoting a business and its very concept.

The printing is flawless. The application brilliant. Design couldn’t be better directed. The client is delighted with BMD Signs and Wrap’s work.

One of Haunted Evenings’ events is held at Lancaster Castle. Not a stones throw from where Metamark manufactures its materials. Whether the resonances generated as the material feels the proximity of its home have any bearing on the ghost hunt isn’t known. What is though is that wherever its seen, BMD’s brilliant livery doesn’t just turn heads, it makes hair stand on end too.