FAQs - Commercial Signage & Installation Services - San Diego

We are at 7044 Convoy Ct, San Diego, CA 92111, in the Kearny Mesa / Convoy district near Hickman Fields. We are a few minutes from I-805 and CA-52, which puts us roughly 15 minutes from downtown and easy to reach from most of the county. There is parking on site and a bay door for large pickups. Call (619) 997-2280 before coming by with a vehicle for a wrap quote.

All of San Diego County. We regularly work in Kearny Mesa, Mira Mesa, Sorrento Valley, Downtown and the Gaslamp Quarter, Chula Vista, La Mesa, El Cajon and up the coast to Carlsbad. Installation crews travel county-wide, and for larger multi-site rollouts we go outside the county as well. See our service areas or our San Diego page.

All three, under one roof, which is the point. A lot of projects fail in the handoffs — the designer sends a file the printer cannot use, or the print gets made in a material the installer cannot hang. When production, design and install sit in the same building, those handoffs stop being your problem. Meet the people who do the work on our team page.

All of them. A large share of our volume is trade work for agencies, designers and other print brokers who need large-format capacity and a shop that will not go around them to their client. We also work directly with contractors, restaurants, retailers, property managers, event planners and individuals who want one canvas print. No account minimums.

Yes. Our success stories cover real projects — event builds, fleet wraps, large interior installs. If you want to see a specific material or finish in person, come by the shop on Convoy Ct and we will pull samples. Seeing a 13oz banner next to an 18oz blockout in daylight settles most material questions in about ten seconds.

Our large-format rolls run up to five feet wide and effectively unlimited in length. Anything wider gets printed in panels and seamed — that is normal practice for building wraps and full-wall murals, and a good installer makes the seams disappear at normal viewing distance. There is no practical size ceiling on a wall mural; the limit is the wall.

Weight per square yard, which translates to thickness and durability. 13oz is the standard scrim banner — right for events, grand openings, real estate and anything hanging for a season. 18oz is heavier, stiffer and holds up better to wind and long outdoor exposure. There is also blockout vinyl with a black core so a double-sided banner does not ghost through. For a two-week event, 13oz. For a fence banner living outside for two years, 18oz. See banners.

A properly hemmed and grommeted 13oz banner typically holds good color for one to two years outdoors here; 18oz pushes further. San Diego is actually kind to vinyl — no freeze-thaw and moderate temperatures — but UV is relentless and coastal wind is what usually kills a banner, not sun. Wind tears at the grommets. If it is going somewhere exposed, ask us about wind slits or a mesh banner instead.

Yes, and the material choice is completely different. Indoor work can use cheaper substrates and non-laminated prints. Outdoor work needs UV-stable inks, an over-laminate and a material rated for the exposure. Tell us where it is going and how long it needs to survive and we will spec it — that one question prevents most of the failures we get called in to fix.

Everything we do is custom. There is no fixed size menu. We contour-cut decals and rigid signs to any shape you can supply as a vector cut path, and we regularly produce odd sizes to fit a specific wall, window, vehicle panel or trade show booth footprint.

Perf film is vinyl punched with a pattern of tiny holes — typically 50/50 or 60/40 print-to-hole ratio. From outside it reads as a solid printed graphic; from inside you can still see out, and daylight still comes through. It is the right answer for storefront windows, conference rooms and vehicle rear windows where you want the graphic without blinding the people inside. More on window graphics.

Yes. Common substrates are corrugated plastic for short-term yard and site signs, PVC and Sintra for interior signage, ACM / aluminum composite for exterior building and monument signs, and acrylic for premium interior work — often paired with stand-offs for a floating look. Each has a different lifespan and price. See signs.

Yes. San Diego's military presence is a real part of our business — command boards, unit graphics, briefing displays, retirement and ceremony pieces, base signage. We understand the turnaround pressure and the approval chains that come with it. See military printing.

Surface area and geometry. A box truck has far more square footage of film, and large flat panels wider than our roll require paneling and seaming. Vans have deep body channels, rivets, corrugation and door hardware that all have to be worked around or removed and reinstalled — that is labor, not material. A car with smooth curves can genuinely be faster to wrap than a smaller van with a difficult body.

With quality cast film and a laminate, expect five to seven years on vertical surfaces. In San Diego the horizontal surfaces — hood and roof — are what age first, because that is where UV hits hardest, and those may show fade or lift a year or two before the sides do. Garage-kept or shaded vehicles run at the long end of the range. A wrap parked outside all day every day runs at the short end.

Not on factory OEM paint in good condition — applied correctly and removed within its service life, vinyl actually protects the paint underneath from UV and small chips. The real risks are aftermarket or resprayed paint, which can lift with the film, and leaving a wrap on for a decade, at which point the adhesive has cured hard and removal gets ugly. Tell us if the vehicle has been repainted; it changes what we recommend.

A full wrap covers every painted surface — total color change, maximum impact. A partial wrap covers a defined portion, commonly the lower two-thirds, rear and doors, using the vehicle's existing color as part of the design. Decals or spot graphics are just cut logos, lettering and contact info on bare paint. Most work vans get the most advertising value per dollar from a good partial wrap, not a full one.

Usually yes, and it is common — a wrap is removable and the paint underneath comes back clean. But check your lease agreement first, because some explicitly prohibit exterior modification, and plan for professional removal before you turn the vehicle in. Removal is a real line item; budget for it rather than being surprised by it.

Plan on two to four days in the shop for a full wrap once artwork is approved: a day for cleaning and prep, one to two for application, and time for the film to relax and post-heat before it goes back out. Partial wraps and decal packages are often a single day. Design and proofing happen before that and are usually the longer part of the calendar.

Hand wash with mild soap and a soft mitt, rinse top-down, and dry with a microfiber towel. Avoid automatic brush car washes — the brushes catch edges and seams and lift them. Keep pressure washers below roughly 1,500 psi, use a wide fan tip and stay a foot back, never spraying straight into an edge. Remove bird droppings, bug splatter and fuel spills promptly; they etch vinyl faster than they etch paint. Park in shade when you reasonably can.

Yes — fleet work is a large part of our wrap lab. We build a template per body style, keep the artwork and cut files on record, and can stage vehicles through so you are never missing your whole fleet at once. When you add a truck in eighteen months, we pull the same file and it matches. More on vehicle wraps.

Either way works. If you have print-ready files, we print them. If you have a logo and nothing else, we build around it. If what you have is a low-resolution JPG pulled off a website, we will tell you honestly whether it can be salvaged at size or needs to be redrawn — and redrawing a logo as clean vector art is usually a small, worthwhile one-time cost that pays off on every job after it.

It depends entirely on scope — laying out a banner from supplied assets is a fraction of designing a full vehicle wrap from scratch. We quote design as part of the project rather than by a rate card, and we tell you up front what is included so it does not creep. If your budget is fixed, say so and we will scope the design to fit it.

Yes, and it is a specialty. Trade show and event work has constraints most graphics do not — booth footprint rules, hanging limits, sight lines, load-in windows and the fact that everything has to survive being packed and shipped. We design around those from the start. See event design.

That is what our displays and branding work is. Lobbies, retail interiors, office fit-outs, showrooms — wall graphics, dimensional lettering, window film, wayfinding and displays designed as one system so the space reads as one brand rather than as six vendors' work bolted together.

Always. Nothing goes to production without your written approval on a proof showing size, layout, colors and material. For color-critical work we can also produce a physical printed proof on the actual substrate before committing to the full run — worth it on large jobs where a color surprise is expensive.

Yes. If you have graphics from another supplier, or your agency printed elsewhere and needs local hands, we will install them. We will look at the material and the substrate first and tell you honestly whether it will hold — we would rather flag a bad film choice before install than get called back about lifting edges in three weeks.

Yes, for larger custom work — wall wraps, murals, dimensional displays, storefronts, multi-room interior programs. We come out, measure the actual space, check the wall surface and lighting, and talk through what will actually work there. Measurements taken off a phone photo are how you end up with a mural six inches short.

Because vinyl only sticks to what is under it. Fresh paint needs to cure — typically three to four weeks — before film goes on, or the adhesive pulls the paint off. Heavy orange-peel or knockdown texture, chalky or dusty surfaces, and cinder block all cause failure with standard film. We assess the surface, recommend the right film or a smoothing step, and tell you if the wall needs work first. See wall prep.

Stand-offs are polished metal barrel mounts that hold an acrylic, metal or PVC panel a short distance off the wall. The gap creates a shadow line that makes the sign read as an object rather than a sticker — it is the standard look for lobby signage, donor walls and conference room ID. More on stand-offs.

Yes. We do custom framing for canvas prints, fine art, photography and printed pieces — including oversized work that standard frame shops will not take. If it came off our printers, we can finish and hang it too.

Yes, and we do it constantly. Wall graphics install with minimal noise, no dust and no fumes, so a single wall can often go up during business hours. For larger programs, or anywhere we need to move furniture and set ladders, we schedule after hours or on weekends so your operation does not stop. See wall murals.

A storefront window graphic or a single wall panel is usually a couple of hours. A full-wall mural runs half a day to a full day depending on size, height and surface. Vehicle wraps are measured in days, not hours. Complex multi-room or multi-site programs get a schedule up front so you know exactly which spaces are affected when.

Raster files — JPG, PNG, TIFF, PSD — are grids of pixels. Enlarge one past its native size and it goes soft or blocky. Vector files — AI, EPS, vector PDF — are mathematical descriptions of shapes, so they scale to any size with perfectly sharp edges. For large-format work, vector is ideal for logos, type and line art. High-resolution raster is fine and often necessary for photographs.

The honest answer is that it depends on viewing distance, not a fixed number. We generally want 300 ppi at final print size for anything viewed up close, and 150 ppi at final size is comfortable for most large-format work. A billboard or building wrap seen from across a parking lot can go far lower — sometimes 20–50 ppi at full scale — and still look perfect. A good rule: build the file at 1/10 scale at 300 ppi and it will be 30 ppi at full size, which is fine at distance.

Send us what you have and tell us which it is. Our printers use a wider gamut than standard CMYK, so we often get better results converting from your original RGB than from an already-converted CMYK file. What matters more: if you have specific brand colors, give us the Pantone / PMS numbers rather than asking us to eyeball them from a screen.

Close, but not identical — and anyone who promises exact is not being straight with you. Monitors emit light, print reflects it, and no two uncalibrated screens agree with each other anyway. Bright saturated blues, greens and oranges are the usual gap. For color-critical jobs we print a physical proof on the actual material so you approve the real thing, not a picture of it.

Include at least 0.25" of bleed on all sides for most printed pieces, and keep critical text and logos at least 0.5" inside the trim. Banners need more — leave 2–3" clear around the perimeter so hems and grommets do not eat your artwork. For vehicle wraps, do not lay out to the panel edge; we will template the actual vehicle.

Use our submit files page — it handles large uploads without the size limits that break email attachments. Dropbox, Google Drive and WeTransfer links work too. Include the finished size, quantity, material if you know it, and the deadline in the same message; it saves a round trip.

It depends on the product. Simple poster boards can sometimes be ready within an hour, though we prefer one to two days to do the finishing properly. Banners and standard signage generally run two to five business days from artwork approval. Vehicle wraps are two to four days in the shop after design sign-off. Large custom installs are scheduled around a site visit. The clock starts at proof approval, not at first contact — so approve fast if the deadline is tight.

Often, yes. We would rather tell you honestly what is possible than promise a date we will miss. Call, give us the real deadline, and we will tell you straight whether it fits — and what it would cost to move it up. Same-day is most realistic on simple flat-print items; anything requiring lamination, cutting, sewing or install needs more room.

For most custom work, yes — everything we produce is made specifically for you and cannot be resold, so a deposit is standard before production begins. Terms depend on the size of the job and whether you are an established account. We will lay it out clearly in your quote; no surprises at pickup.

Yes. We do a significant amount of white-label production for agencies, designers, sign companies and print brokers who need large-format capacity. We work behind your brand and we do not go around you to your client. Ask about trade pricing when you reach out.

Both. Most local clients pick up at 7044 Convoy Ct or have us deliver and install. We also ship nationwide — banners, decals, canvas and rigid signage all travel fine when packed properly. Vehicle wraps obviously need the vehicle here, but we do print and ship wrap kits to installers elsewhere. See recent work in our success stories.