Field Notes: Farm Fresh. Road Ready. Nationally Recognized.
Locally grown. Nationally recognized.
Signs Ink Earns National Recognition
Some vehicle wraps turn heads. This one caught the industry’s attention, too.
We’re proud to share that Signs Ink has been recognized in the 2026 Signs of the Times Sign Contest in the category of Best Signshop or Outside-Designed Vehicle Wrap, an honor led by the creativity, craftsmanship and sharp eye of Esteban Baquero, who heads our vehicle wrap and design work and brought this project to life.
For a shop that has spent nearly 40 years designing, fabricating, installing and obsessing over fractions of an inch, it feels pretty good to see the details get noticed.
From Farm to Road
The winning project was created for Hemlock Hill Farm & Market, a New York State Grown & Certified and USDA inspected working farm in Cortlandt Manor.
Hemlock Hill raises, butchers and sells pasture raised meats entirely on site. When the farm added a new refrigerated delivery vehicle, it needed a design that would carry the brand as faithfully as the vehicle carries its products.
The result was a complete transformation of a Mercedes Sprinter 3500XD refrigerated cargo van into a rolling portrait of the farm.
A Design Rooted in the Brand
The vehicle arrived with a deep forest green factory finish, an unusual starting point that many designers might view as a limitation.
Esteban saw an opportunity.
Rather than conceal the original color, he made it an integral part of the design. A richly illustrated pastoral landscape stretches across the vehicle, featuring grazing cattle, free range chickens, tree lines and a golden hour sky rendered in warm tans and natural earth tones.
The original hunter green finish grounds the entire composition and connects it naturally to the Hemlock Hill brand.
Period inspired typography anchors the Hemlock Hill Farm & Market and Pasture Raised Meats messaging along the driver and passenger sides. The rear doors function as a complete brand asset of their own, featuring the farm’s product offerings and certification seals.
Every panel has a purpose.
More Than a Moving Billboard
A great vehicle wrap has a tough job.
It needs to grab attention in seconds. It needs to communicate a brand clearly from 20 feet away, or 50 feet away at 45 miles per hour. It also has to work across doors, handles, curves, seams and contours that were definitely not designed with graphics in mind.
That is where craftsmanship comes in.
Successful vehicle graphics begin long before the vinyl reaches the vehicle. They require smart design, accurate measurements, the right materials, careful preparation and installers who understand how a flat design translates onto a highly dimensional surface.
The Hemlock Hill wrap required 12 carefully aligned panels covering approximately 200 square feet of the vehicle. Its refrigerated body, cooling unit, body seams, door hardware and running boards demanded precise panel planning and exact seam placement.
The graphics were printed on Avery Dennison MPI 1105 wrapping film and protected with Avery Dennison DOL 1360Z gloss overlaminate for durability and consistent color across the vehicle’s compound curves.
Once the design was approved, Esteban and installer Sandro Saritama completed production and installation within a compressed two week timeline.
From every angle, the pastoral illustration reads as one continuous landscape.
When all those pieces come together, a work vehicle stops being just transportation.
It becomes advertising space you already own.
Built to Be Seen
At Signs Ink, we’ve wrapped everything from service vans and delivery vehicles to trucks and full commercial fleets.
The goal is not simply to cover a vehicle in vinyl. It is to make the brand unmistakable.
Logo placement. Color. Contrast. Scale. Readability. The right amount of information and the discipline to leave out everything else.
Because when someone has only three seconds to see your truck at an intersection, those three seconds have a lot of work to do.
A strong vehicle wrap should answer three questions almost instantly:
Who are you? What do you do? How do I find you?
Everything else is along for the ride.
Recognition From the Industry
That is what makes this recognition particularly meaningful.
Signs of the Times has covered the sign industry since 1906, and its annual Sign Contest recognizes standout work from sign companies and designers across the country.
Being included among the 2026 honorees places our team’s work alongside that of some seriously talented shops doing exceptional things across the industry.
We’re proud of the company we’re in.
But we’re even prouder of Esteban, Sandros and the entire crew who make projects like this possible, from design and production to preparation and installation.
Awards recognize the finished product.
We know how much work happens before anyone ever sees it.
Ready to Put Your Brand in Motion?
From a single commercial vehicle to a full fleet, Signs Ink designs, produces and installs vehicle graphics built to get your business seen.
