16 candidates begin The Apprentice with a design task

BBC’s “The Apprentice” has spawned so many satirical skits over the years, and the new series shows little sign of this altering. This week, the task was to design a logo. Something we have to do regularly but their efforts gave rise to much online ridicule.

You can see the clip of their cruise ship logo and the reaction of Lord Sugar here.

Design is something that we engage with daily at Seymour Sign and Print, and, being charitable to the Apprentice team it is horses for courses. We’re sure that if we were asked to design a home extension or lay a patio or run a marketing campaign for cryptocurrency, we’d struggle. But give us branding, office branding, vehicle graphics and we’re over it like a seagull on chips.

If you want to do vehicle graphics well, you have to pay for expertise in design, materials and installation. That team of eight on the BBC would gladly take your money if they set up a design firm, but we’re pretty certain you’d be disappointed with that result!

Wouldn’t you agree?

Vehicle graphics, just like a logo on a reality tv show, need to look fantastic. They need to make people look and look again – and they shouldn’t become an internet sensation based on how bad they are!

Anyone setting up a business commits money to branding and marketing, but too often they choose companies to brand a van, a car or even a fleet, based on cost. We all know the saying “You get what you pay for” and you really do.

A brief internet search for vehicle wraps, graphics, stickers will yield readymade, off the shelf options. They are often cheap, not bespoke and designed quickly to be posted to you for installation by you.

This is where you may get “The Apprentice Syndrome”.

We all think we can do something easily. Many of us are convinced that we can do anything and well! But we see DIY attempts at branding vehicles constantly and they all look, to put it mildly, amateurish next to a professional job.

We wouldn’t drive round to your business to clean your windows, to service a commercial boiler or create a marketing plan to increase sales at your firm. No. We specialise in vehicle branding and we do that niche work in an excellent way.

David and his team were fantastic. This is the 2nd van of ours they’ve sign written and the finished van looks great. They even fitted us in at short notice when I was in the area. – Richard Brown

Thanks to Seymour sign and print for such an amazing job on my cherry picker which can be seen on their Instagram page. From start to finish the process was straight forward, nice and easy…deposit paid, artwork sent from Dave, van booked in and dropped off, then I picked up a fully signed up van!!!…nice and simple, can’t recommend them enough for such a cracking job, well pleased with the end result thanks to Dave and Paul. – Rob Brearley

So when you’re looking for expertise, choose experts in that field.

One of that Apprentice team got fired – we want you instead to hire us.