Lance and Camo from Pirate4x4 have become very good friends over the years.  These guys have their hands full running the LARGEST hardcore rock crawler forum in the world.  Over one million visitors read the pages of Pirate4x4 each month.  Many people consider Pirate4x4 to be the birthplace of many industry changing concepts within the offroad community.  Be sure to visit Pirate4x4 for all of the hardcore wheeling, wrenching, fabricating, and of course flaming you can stand.

When I told Lance and Camo I was leaving the fabrication they were shocked, but understood my need to be closer to family.  After about 30 “wow’s” and few other colorful comments, Camo asked, “What are your going to do now?”  Camo and I talked about the graphic design work I had been doing for years and how I planned to transition to it full time. So, the guys at Pirate4x4 did not waste any time putting me to work designing a vinyl wrap for their new communications van.  The van is a 1986 Ford Econoline F350.  Getting this project started was a little more difficult than most projects. The difficulty may have been the overwhelming need to make sure the van expressed the Pirate 4×4 attitude.  A local search to find a matching van to build the custom templates yielded zero results.  I told Lance and Camo what I needed from them, and we set the plan into action to get the Pirate4x4 van wrapped.

After many hours trying to think of a suitable design for the Pirate4x4 van I kept coming back to black and duh a lot of skulls.  Lance and Camo approved the artwork and then I mailed off the goods to our friends at Bighorn to print and install the design.  Normally I would design, print, and install the project here, or at least design, print, and ship it.  The Pirate4x4 Van Wrap project involved a number of active vendors from Pirate.  Bighorn (Scott) is another graphics guy on Pirate who shared the task of completing the vinyl wrap project.  After printing the job one of their guys flew out to the Pirate4x4 world headquarters to install the vinyl wrap.  I would like to add we did have a little issue with the United States Postal Service, but it was taken care of quickly. In the end, MANY vendors came together to help Pirate4x4 transform an average everyday blue van into a desert going signal transmitting pimp wagon.  If you are into rock crawling be sure to support the sponsoring vendors of Pirate4x4.

Take a look at the Pirate4x4 Media Van Wrap.  The project is not complete.  Pieces will be added on the side windows to carry the sword over the glass like it should.  The original design called for window perf to carry the graphic design onto the windows, but the Pirate4x4 staff opted for solid vinyl to be contour cut around the sword handle.  These pieces will be added in the near future.  As soon as the Pirate Staff gets more pictures to me I will update the post.