Quality Decals Technique
 

I won't lie I find expensive to pay 40$ for a set of decals. I find enough to pay on repaint. With my illustrator skills, I want to make them myself. Let's say I find proper jpg's and rebuild in vector. Then, what is the correct way of doing this? What does italian history tells us?:) Basically you need to print them on a cutter-plotter, but what kind of machine you need to have special colours?(gold). Then, what material do they used? Vinyl? And then the last question, on top of the decal, they add the final layer of coating?
Thanks

The least expensive way to get quality decals is to buy them from one of the many sources on the internet. Do a search on this forum for decals and you will find where to look.

Creating the vector artwork is the easiest and least expensive part of making decals. Printing them on suitable media is the toughest and most expensive part. You need a white underlay or opaque spot color printer. Vinyl decals are generally printed with a printer that can also laser cut the outline. These machines aren't cheap.

Good luck.

Just my opinion ... and experience: I did a lot of research on this, yet I claim no expertise or prior knowledge. But I'll dare to say that I found the whole subject complicated and defeating in so many ways.

I have produced some decals. Among other things, they were compromised by inks that degrded in UV, media that was not the best, the lack of laser cutting, and copying from originals that were not scanned in the best manner. It takes materials, equipment, software, and some expertise or apprenticing in graphics to assure the better result. There are people who have recorded successes — people who were not graphics professionals — Randyjawa being one.

All that being said, my favorite ride at the moment is a '78-'81 4-Star Simplon. I produced a non-period head-badge for this very rare machine using a screenshot of a web jpeg, a very simple graphics app., and an inkjet printer with ordinary non-archival inks. It has altered colors due to UV. But when local bike enthusiasts are trying to ID the marque, it does the job admirably. Besides, it looks genuine in an antique way.

The rest of my work failed more horribly, but I had a bit of fun — that's all.

My conclusion: $40 (your quote) for a professionally produced decal-set on spiffy media is cheaper as well as well-worth the price. If you wanna build 200 bicycles, you should contract to have your own decals produced by a professional graphics house. Or alternately, if graphics is something that really turns you on, invest in it and study yer arse off. There is not a really cheap and or easy way around this, but you can sometimes get lucky.

YMMV and others may give different opinions.

Good luck — L.

I was a graphics professional for a lot of years before I turned to design education. Creating and producing these graphics (a topic that has been revisited quite a few times on this forums, btw) can often be an arduous task. Even if you go down the road of producing your own water slide decals (which is not always a good option), and presuming you own or have access to the printing equipment, you still are going to have the raw costs of the water slide substrate (which is not cheap.) I've sourced numerous places to have decals made from my art files and each vendor is a new and often expensive adventure into figuring out what they can and cannot accomplish. It's not unusual for a printer to overstate their capabilities. I recently created Illustrator files for a fellow enthusiast and got costs for the production from a very trusted vendor who has produced excellent results. The vendor is also a personal friend and often cuts me a deal with "at cost" pricing. Even still, it was going to cost $25, and this is after I did all the hard work of reproducing in exacting detail all of the graphics (translation: hours and hours of time.) Recreating graphics can be tough, too, when the best you have for reference is often a curved, not-straight-on, distorted photo to work from. The upshot here is that $40 is a real bargain when you consider the hidden side of production.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that we've got a Yahoo! group specifically set up as a library for Illustrator vector files some of us have generated as re-creations of bicycle decals. Click here to join. New, high quality files are always welcomed; otherwise, download and use the ones we've collected so far for your own projects.

nice, i will chip in with a zullo logo in the group
i think my issue is i don't trust those ebay decals, i once bought this water decals and they were no good
vinyl can be found, also a good printer between my friends(dunno if with special colours)
the problem is finding a proper flat jpg that would have the information needed
btw, those decals in the group are at pantone code?:)

The ones I created are Pantone coded - or at least as close to a match as they could be, based upon the reference I was using at the time. Photography can be notoriously fickle when it comes to accurate color, so bear that in mind. Also, the actual printed decals often faded over time, and in many instances there would be tremendous variation in color even in a single print run. I can't say whether or not the contributions of others have been Pantone coded, though.

in the begining i was seing this as a really complicated thing. but now i don't. if they could do it in the 60's, etc, it can't be that hard. i know, it's a production thing, but anyways, it's fun to make your own quality stuff.
imagine this aren't some egipt misteries, but only some infos 40 years ago. if we could have the original colours of the bikes, that would be awesome in restoring. some infos, in some hidden notebooks in italy:)

Well making decals is certainly possible if you have the skills and resources. A few years ago I searched all over for decals for a project I was working on and not finding any, I decided to make my own. I ended up buying an Alps printer and produced all the decals and headbadge for for this bike. It wasn't cheap, but I got what I wanted.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...d/DSC06166.jpg
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...d/DSC06168.jpg

omg, that's the spirit

That is what it takes sometimes. My hat goes off to people who know that anything worth doing is worth over-doing!

And we have this amazing result to admire!

That Peugeot looks super! Good job!

Honestly, I can make my own graphics but I think 40 bucks for a set is a bargain. I'm playing with inkjet waterslide decals now, not sure how well they'll hold up. I also have an ALPS, but haven't used it in a few years; its capable of fabulous results, though now long obsolete.

If you can create the vector art going to a sign shop that prints and cuts vinyl is your best bet. Colors are limited to what they have as it uses a thermal transfer process, so Pantone is not going to help much, but they can print on white, clear, gold, silver, foil, whatever, and cut to a specific shape if you define it with a vector line. They charge by the size and number of colors, so a single set might run less than 40. if you can create the art. But print a few and sell them to help recoup your costs...

Here's my project result in making decals for my Pinarello Montello.

Before:
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...o/DSC_0003.jpg

Now:

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...DSC_0014-2.jpg

It's not easy, as a hobby it's fun!