Creating three dimensional truckside advertisementsHow fleet vehicles can be used as innovative platforms to deliver unique messages.
To you left you see what looks like a showroom inside a truck, what you actually see is a truckside billboard, a two dimensional print designed to fool the eye into believing what they see is a 3d environment.
The concept was borrowed from the creative artwork found at the Rhino Rolling Advertising awards website. The Rhino award is a contest where companies (design companies) are given the task of creating a unique design for the two panels of a design truck.
Here lies our first problem
For any client or advertiser to achieve the perspective to your right one picture would be created and then sliced to the dimensions of the truck. These dimensions would most likely be 8.5 feet X 52 feet the rear door being approximately 8.5 feet X 8 feet. You would now how a great design, something that would be quite eye catching. Whats interesting, and what Rhino-Awards got right was only letting design teams design the left hand side of the vehicle. That is because these vehicles travel in Germany, a country were vehicles drive on the right hand side of the road, and where semi-trucks (similar to the United States and Canada) predominately drive on the right hand of the lane. So you now have an ad, that will be passed by vehicles. Now, put this truck in Britain and we have a problem.
You see, this advertisement will only work one way, and that is from the left hand side of the truck. What happens to the right hand side of the vehicle, a piece of a mobile advertising campaign that accounts for about 30% of your total impressions. What happens is you can no longer work with the rear door in the design of the advertisement, so much so that you cannot duplicate the print on that side as the design is defendant upon the rear print to achieve the correct perspective.
Our second problem
As you can see in your picture, you perspective looks great right? Well it will for about 5 to 10 seconds while you are at the correct angle to view both images as they are intended to be viewed to have a continuous effect without interruption. Here lies three variables that effect the viewing angle of your mobile billboard:
1: The original design and the angles set out in the designs
The first advertisement shown was from a perfect straight on angle.
The second assumes the vehicle is driving behind and to the left of the truckside advertisement.
2: The position of the semi-truck in the lane
3: The position of the passenger vehicle (or viewer) in the lane
As you can see to your right the advertisement loses perspective as soon as the viewing angle changes. Here the front of the vehicle and the front of the room look much larger than they should, and in fact should not be there if we were looking into a real room. The rear wall, which should be the rear door of the truck looks much smaller.
Best method for using your truck as a three dimensional space
The best bethod for acheiving perspective ultimately boils down to the quality of your impressions. If it is a 3d look you are after than you should not concentrate on working two portions of your truck into one advertisement as it leaves the other side out of perspective and renders that perspective useless. It can actually work against you as vehicles viewing the truck from the other side will see a very confusing set of advertisements working against eachother instead of together.
Instead concentrate on creating two separate designs which will both form a equilateral triangle with the viewer. Imagine that you are sitting in the center of the ad, as you walk back you will continue to maintain the angles of the two walls with your plane of sight until you form an equilateral triangle, two posts and the viewer.
Why are we doing this?
The impressions created by the back of the truck account for approximately 40% of the total impressions created by the truckside ad. This is greater that 33% which is one third of available sides of a vehicle, and ALWAYS the smallest part of the ad. This is also the only angle of the vehicle that can be seen by two or possibly three vehicles at once, for a long period of time. For you to get the maximum amount of information across to your consumer, you MUST take the drivers perspective into consideration.
The benefits are also present on the side.
In heavily populated areas where the truck may be passing by pedestrian traffic the ad will have a great impac with a eqiulimbrium triangle perspective for your potential clientel on the sidewalk. You do not want to have them glimps at your ad, missing the point that there are two parts to the ad, and you must be on the left back to see this.
So keep in mind when working with 3d perspectives on truckside or mobile billboards, the angle changes everything, and there is nothing more variable or unpredictable than that of the distance and degrees that change between your ad and the viewing public. Keeping your perspective simple on all sides of the vehicle will save you money and headaches.
For more information and examples of other 3d work we have done checkout my business website: enRoute ads. Inc - Vancouver mobile billboards and truckside ads
Thanks for reading my post, please give me some input!
Regards,
Peter Kowalski
