“Dino Van” becomes a Reality

By | May 19th, 2009|Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Main Page|0 Comments

“Dino Van” Takes to the Road

Everything Dinosaur is a very unusual company, that’s for sure.  Being made up of teachers and dinosaur experts we consider ourselves very lucky to be able to do what we do – helping young people learn more about Earth sciences through their fascination with prehistoric animals.

The way we manage the company may be a little unconventional, perhaps a reflection on the unconventional nature of our business.  For example, when it was decided to get a new van, rather than have a plain, white van it was agreed to make the vehicle a mobile advertisement for us and use it to promote Everything Dinosaur.

A competition was held amongst ourselves, family friends, school children and well wishers as to what sort of signage our van should have to promote what we do.  We had some wonderful suggestions, sticking a model of a dinosaur on the roof, was a particular (although somewhat impractical), favourite of mine.

Everything Dinosaur

However, armed with a basic idea about the image we wanted to create we set about finding a talented, enthusiastic design team that could take our suggestion and make it a reality.

We have posted up in the past some of the initial artwork from the design company involved, a Cheshire based business called Intent Signs, a business that specialises in creating signage and graphics including vehicle livery.

I am not quite sure how many clients this dynamic company has, but I’m sure not many of their prospective customers turn up one afternoon, simply knock on the door and enquire about their services with nothing formal in writing, no brief or anything other than some letterhead and a couple of pictures of dinosaurs.  This rather unorthodox approach did not phase the young team at Intent, in fact they seemed to relish the chance to show off their expertise and help turn our ideas into reality.

Within half an hour or so, Dean Elliott, the Graphics Manager had sketched out an idea for the signage, a budget had been agreed and the brief (if you could call it a brief) had been completed.

The Dinosaur Van

For a company with many years of experience in the sign making industry, putting a dinosaur concept together was not a problem, you could say it was like water of a duck-billed dinosaur’s back and before long Steven Weir, and his team of designers had come up with the first interpretations of our ideas.

Using state of the art digital printing and CAD cutting facilities a series of photo quality vinyl graphics were produced in readiness for their application to our little van.  A day for the vehicle to go in and have its “make over” as the girls called it, was arranged and 24-hours later, out from the Intent Signs custom built workshop came our new vehicle – “Dino Van”.

Getting Up Close and Personal with a Tyrannosaurus rex

Picture credit: Intent Signs/Everything Dinosaur

The skilled operatives soon had our white van completely transformed and we think the graphics are pretty cool.

The Graphics on the Rear of the Van

Everything Dinosaur’s Dinosaur Van.

Picture credit: Intent Signs/Everything Dinosaur

The Finished Article – our “Dino Van”

Everything Dinosaur’s “Dino Van”.

Picture credit: Intent Signs/Everything Dinosaur

It certainly is a unique vehicle, a one of a kind and our van has been transformed into a very eye-catching mobile advertisement for our business.  The local newspaper sent a reporter round to take some pictures as the “Dino Van” was unveiled, hopefully it will feature in the paper this week.  This should give both Intent Signs and ourselves some valuable publicity, now if only I could pluck up the courage to get behind the wheel and drive it…

The T. rex that features on the van’s livery is similar to a Tyrannosaurus rex model introduced by the French manufacturer Papo. To view the Papo tyrannosaurs and the other Papo dinosaurs available from Everything Dinosaur: Papo Dinosaur Models and Prehistoric Animal Figures.