Designing a Logo for a Moving Car: 9 Rules for Vehicle Ad Artwork

Artwork that looks great in a design file can fall apart on a car. The panel curves, the car moves, the viewer is ten metres away and looks for two seconds. Here are the rules that survive all that.

1. Three elements, maximum. Logo, name, one line or URL. Every extra element makes the others smaller.
2. Test it at thumbnail size. Shrink your artwork to about 3% of its printed width on screen. If you can't read it there, nobody will read it in traffic.
3. High contrast beats brand-guideline nuance. Dark on light or light on dark. Two mid-tones side by side turn to mush at a distance.
4. Heavy type. Bold or black weights only. Thin fonts vanish.
5. Mind the shape of the panel. A long flank strip wants a horizontal lockup. A hood quarter wants something closer to square. Design for the space you're actually buying.
6. Keep text off edges and curves. Panel gaps, handles and body lines cut through artwork. Leave margin.
7. A URL people can remember. Short vanity path, no https://, no www. See tracking offline ads.
8. Consider the paint. Your panel sits on the car's colour. Add a background plate if the logo needs one.
9. Vector files. SVG, PDF or AI at full size. Print shops enlarge. Pixels blur.

Applying this to the Harrier.ev placements

When you book a placement, the 3D model shows your logo on that exact panel straight away, so you can check it the way the street will see it. Try it on the rate card.