The Dusty Bunch Van: A Full Sprinter Wrap for Storyteller Overland in Five Business Days

Storyteller Overland builds adventure vans a few miles from our shop. When their marketing team needed a Sprinter wrapped for The Dusty Bunch, the timeline was the whole brief. The art files landed in our inbox on day one. The van itself was still out on a film shoot and couldn't get to us until the afternoon of day two. It had to be finished, installed and back in Storyteller's hands by day five.

That's a full color change plus printed graphics on a high-roof Sprinter, with three different finishes on one vehicle, in a single working week. Here's what we did and the decisions that kept it on schedule.

01Who's The Dusty Bunch?

The name on the doors belongs to a band. The Dusty Bunch is made up mostly of the people who build adventure vans at Storyteller Overland, and their signature move is playing live from inside a moving Storyteller van: amps, drums, guitars and a booming bass packed into the build.

That explains the design brief. Retro stripes and a script logo read more like a record sleeve than a fleet decal, and that's exactly the point. This van had to look like it belonged to a band, not a delivery route.

Tour dates from thedustybunch.com. Check their site for the latest.

02What Storyteller handed us

Storyteller's in-house designers did the creative, and they did it well. We received a vector template of the full wrap, rendered mockups of the van from the front and the rear, and the Dusty Bunch logo as an EPS. Three stripes in red, orange and yellow run the length of both sides, sweep into concentric curves across the rear doors, and the script logo sits on the side glass and the back door. A separate black band carries the lower body.

Good files make fast jobs possible.

When a customer sends real vector art on a proper vehicle template, we spend the week on production instead of rebuilding artwork. That's where the days get saved.

03Three finishes on one van

The mockup called for a satin black base, gloss color on every printed element, and gloss on the lower black band. Two of those three were easy. The third would have cost us the deadline.

The base color came first. Storyteller asked whether the black could lean satin instead of matte, mostly for cleanability. We could order satin that day, but it meant returning the matte film already in hand and betting the delivery on a fresh shipment showing up on time. We put that choice in front of them in writing. They kept matte, and on a van this shape the matte base is exactly what makes the gloss stripes pop.

The lower black band was a different problem. Satin in that width was a 64-inch roll with a 12-day lead time, which wasn't happening. We recommended gloss black instead. It has the smoothest surface on the vehicle, it wipes clean, and it gives the lower body a subtle break from the matte above it. That's what's on the van.

One more check before anything printed. The artwork specified the base black as #191717 rather than true black. Film comes in the colors it comes in, and nobody tints a roll of matte black to a hex code in a week. Their designer confirmed the tint was only there to separate the base from the lower band on screen, and true black was the intent.

We asked before we assumed. Five minutes on the phone beats a reprint.

04Where the five days went

1. Day 1Files in

   Vector template, mockups and logo arrive. Finish questions go back the same afternoon. Matte black film was already ordered off the first images, so the clock never waited on a decision.

2. Day 2Van in

   Finishes confirmed before 11 a.m. The van arrives that afternoon straight from Storyteller's film shoot, and gets washed and prepped.

3. Days 3–4Production

   Print, laminate, install. Full color change, both sides, rear doors, lower band, three logos.

4. Day 5Delivered

   Back at Storyteller Overland, parked in front of a building that happens to wear the same three stripes.

05If you run vans, trucks or a fleet

Most wrap jobs don't have a film crew waiting on them, but the things that made this one fast are the same things that make any fleet job go well. Vector art on a real template. Finish decisions made once, in writing. Material in hand before the vehicle shows up.

We print and install vehicle graphics in Birmingham for dealers, contractors and brands, from a single lettered tailgate to a full color change like this one. If you've got a vehicle that needs to look like it belongs to somebody, send us a photo of it and we'll mock up your brand on it before you spend a dollar.