Wrap champions from either side of the Tasman
Melbourne wide format outfit Graphic Effects has won the 2014 national ASGA Wrap Masters Challenge at Visual Impact, but fell to the Kiwis in the Trans Tasman final. The Aussie champion defeated other state winners at Sydney’s Visual Impact show with an adjusted time of three hours, 29 minutes and 27 seconds – just one minute and 22 seconds ahead of Brisbane’s SS Signs. The teams raced to wrap a car with printed film, with time penalties docked from their score for mistakes. Behind the leaders were Sydney’s Bear Designs at three hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds and Darwin’s SignCity with three hours, 41 minutes and 30 seconds. Perth’s Signarama Joondalup was unable to compete due to illness. After winning the Aussie final, Graphic Effects faced Kiwi team GAS Graphics the next day, but were soundly beaten by their experienced opponents.
Wrapping for the national title
Though the Victorian outfit was able to shave 19 minutes off the previous day’s finishing time, its adjusted time of four hours, 21 minutes and 10 seconds was no match for the GAS time of three hours, 31 minutes and 29 seconds (time penalties were doubled to two minutes per mistake in this match). Graphic Effects director Iain Gartley says the team improved its finishing time by 50 minutes from the state preliminary thanks to better planning, time and effort and learning from their mistakes. He says, “There was not a day in the weeks after the Victorian event where someone did not have a new idea on how to improve. “We wrote notes and in the week before this event we mapped it all out – who does what in what order according to their strengths, like in any team sport. “We changed enough things to improve a lot more than the 20 to 30 minutes we hoped for, which was surprising. “I would have loved to be able to watch the Kiwis at work and see how they do it.” Gartley says Graphic Effects will definitely enter a team next year and that the experience of the competition will help the company do a better job in real wraps for its business.
GAS, the winning New Zealand team, takes out the Trans Tasman title
Competition judge and managing director of Sydney signage company Metalplaque David Hay was in charge of assessing the quality of the work and determining the final times. He says, “We go round the car, judging each panel separately looking at their accuracy, craftsmanship, cutting, making sure there are no bubbles, misalignment or crease marks.” He says there has been a lot of interest in the competition and the next final will be in New Zealand in 2016. He says, “We have had quite a few people join the audience for the heats around Australia, including people out of the industry who are just interested in seeing what is happening and how a car gets wrapped. “People cannot expect that sign companies will wrap a car in that sort of time, because there is more time put into the job to make sure every part is correct. The idea here is to show a bit of skill and speed to get people interested. “Even at this show people are amazed to see how quickly a car can be wrapped, so accurately, and just how much it changes a car.” Graphic Effects will take home a Roland DG SolJet PRO4 XR-640 loaded with 3M film as its prize.
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