How To Turn A Black Cab Green

Adapting a campaign design for a real-world surface.

A challenging print spec

There’s a quote attributed to Bowie that’s all about going a little further out, where your feet don’t quite touch the sea floor. Many years ago I got sent a head scratcher of a print guide and needed to translate a felt pen scamp into a grass covered black cab.

This was back when I was the artworker for a small marketing company based in Camden. There were three teams of three on either side of the room. In front of me were the creatives and over on the other side were the accounts. We had some brilliant jobs come through and I’ll probably dip in to share a few more as I go through the archives but this one stood out today.

Way back before ULEZ, our client wanted to improve London by getting more vehicles using their blended biofuel and our team had sold them not only a green cab but one that looked like it was growing grass. Once we’d figured out the rules over what you could and couldn’t do with regard to wrapping a taxi, the only challenge was decoding the complicated print guide that landed on my desk.

Thankfully the printers would be the ones sorting out the individual sheets but the photoshop layer was going to need to be carefully constructed to get enough resolution out of the stock image and avoid obvious joins. The compromise was the dorsal reflection and once the logos and copy were laid over the top, it wasn’t too obvious. I’d probably fix it better these days but time was tight and there was always a pile of other jobs to get out the door.

I seem to remember the launch went well although one of the cabbies had to be told to stay away as they wanted to give the mayor a piece of their mind. (Plus ça change.)

I guess the point of this is that I have always found being thrown in the deep end to be the part of the job that I enjoy the most. Probably why I love the creative industry and why I’ve freelanced for so long. Are you touching the sea floor or have you gone further out, where things could get interesting?

One of the finished cabs at the city hall launch