Award Night Wrap up

Award Night Wrap up

Pride In Print 2010 Supreme Award Winner and Packaging Category Winner

Baby Food Can Wins Supreme Print Award for Waikato

Winning the most prestigious award in the New Zealand print industry will be the catalyst to put Fonterra Canpac of Hamilton back on track after a catastrophic fire earlier this year.

Canpac earned the Supreme Award in the 2010 New Zealand Pride In Print Awards tonight (subs: Friday June 18) for a metal baby food can that has been a success in extremely-demanding overseas markets. Its Nutricia Karicare Gold Plus 1 can wowed judges with its technical excellence allied to the fact that it had gained acceptance with international clients whose standards are exacting.

But while the can earned international recognition from customers in tough global markets, print plant manager Greg Wardrop said that its other major success would be to restore morale at the Hamilton plant.

“The fire closed down our production and was a very hard blow to take. This win will help us rebuilt that department and come back stronger. We have had a tough year but this will make us more determined to come back,” he said.

In a testament to the collaborative spirit within the New Zealand print industry, Mr Wardrop paid tribute to competitor NCI Packaging who had come to the aid of Canpac while its production was disrupted.

Pride In Print chairman and senior judge Scott Porter said that for any packaging to succeed in the global arena, it had to be outstanding.

“There is a huge emotional attachment in the relationship between mother and baby and that is reflected in the relationship between the product and its packaging. This is a super-tough market for a packaging printer to make an impression.

“This can represents wonderful colours and density. Technically, they had to print three whites to achieve that density, which has succeeded in impressing the client

“I know just how hard that was to achieve. These guys have demonstrated outstanding skill and technique. They are a credit to the industry.”

As well as winning the Supreme Award, the Nutricia Karicare can also won the Packaging Category, where it came up against entrants in flexible packaging, carton board and corrugated board, metal and other types of packaging.

Promotional Print Category

Superb Photo Essay Book Takes Promotional Print Prize

KENETIC 121 SNARES PRINT AWARD FOR WELLINGTON

Rekindling magic moments of a trip through Europe and taking readers back to their own world travels, has won a Wellington firm the Promotional Print Category of the Pride In Print Awards held in Auckland’s Sky City tonight (subs: Friday June 18).

Entered by Kinetic 121 and printed by Momento Photobooks of Wellington, the success of the single-edition photo essay “Netherlands-Paris-Netherlands” reflects the growing importance of the photo book market to wedding albums, family histories and personal mementoes.

Kinetic 121 production manager Lisa Thompson said that producing the book was a major test of the printer-customer relationship.

“With this kind of work you know there is only one copy. You just have to get it right. You are capturing personal memories and you simply must do it perfectly.”

Ms Thompson said that Momento was creating an important print niche with such books – “As digital print becomes more accessible in the market, companies such as Momento are showing there is huge potential for personalised print. Quantities of between one and 1000 are within everyone’s reach.”

Senior judge Denise Pringle described the book as superb -- “Starting with the vibrant images, with balanced composition; to the clean and crisp page design; the skill of the digital press operator to maintain the grey balance consistency; to the exceptionally well-made and crafted book and case. Finishing with the beautifully-presented product that we judged, the book is a great example of how digital printing can be utilised.

“The book represents the work of professional photographers recording their European trip so the images are vibrant. It is exceptionally-well made and formatted.

“It evoked a very strong emotional response, as all the judges were reminiscing of their own travels to France and The Netherlands, wishing they too, had a book like this to remember them by!” she said.

Netherlands-Paris-Netherlands was up against entries covering customised campaigns, catalogues and leaflets, presentational folders, promotional work and calendars in the Promotional Print Category.

Publications Category and Web Process

Immaculate Mindfood Is Top Publication

Glossy magazine Mindfood has shown what it takes to jump off the news stand and into the hands of the magazine reader, by taking out the Publications Category of the Pride In Print Awards held tonight (subs: Friday June 18) at Auckland’s Sky City

Entered by APN Print Manukau, Mindfood July/August 2009 edition impressed judges with its immaculate quality of production and also won the Web Process Award.

Heatset web print judges said Mindfood stood out because of its high degree of difficulty.

“This magazine had a 50,000 print run on an 18-year-old press and had a four-day turnaround. The quality is extremely high with excellent colour and register. It also has a double gatefold cover for further impact. To achieve this kind of consistency on a press running at ten metres a second is a huge feat for the web sector,” was the judges’ comment.

APN Print Manukau operations manager Craig Harris said this was a prestigious title.

“It’s all effort involved in printing it and it’s been a consistent market winner. It’s the machine we put it on, the way the artwork is presented – just the whole magazine comes together and works really well for us.

“We actually got the client set up at their end to the ISO standard, we did the front-end work and then they followed it through and we get a good result.

“It is colourful and was run on 90gsm stock which we got designed from the mill specifically for this job – it’s the only one we do on this stock. It has a gate-fold cover as well, which involves a lot of work. It’s quite a tricky job.

“We’re a leading force in the ISO standard – finger-printing our presses and working with outside companies like Frontline Technologies to make sure we’re always printing the best that we can. With the changes that happen, you’ve got to keep adapting them. It is all something that benchmarks the industry.”

Mindfood was competing against other magazines, newspapers and books in the Publications Category.

Environmental Award

Pallet Label Goes Outside the Square to Win Environment Award

An innovative pallet label produced by a Hawkes Bay company that won over Japanese wood product importers has been further recognised with the Environmental Prize at the Pride In Print Awards held in Auckland’s Sky City tonight (subs: Friday June 18).

The Pulp Pallet Labels for Pan Pac, entered by GEON Napier, solved a labelling problem that had concerned exporters of pulp to Asia. It produced a fully-recyclable label that can be reduced to pulp along with the pallets of wood it is attached to, fully meeting the requirements of the Japanese importers.

“This is an example of looking at a problem in a different way and coming up with a new solution,” said senior design judge Kerenza Smith.

“The company worked with the end client through every step of research, including pulping tests, to discover the best way forward. It was a partnership approach that reviewed the technological options and environmental research to come up with a replacement for a non-environmental product.

“It is little things like this that make a difference in our industry. To get this solution accepted in a very demanding overseas market is a very impressive design feat.”

GEON New Zealand group general manager Andrew Durrans said the result helped make this the best-ever Pride In Print for the company.

“We won Golds in all of our regions. We run our own ‘internal Pride In Print’, people within our organisation critique the jobs and we only try to send in the best of what we’ve done.

“We were a little bit disappointed as a company last year -- we were going through a particularly hard time and didn’t enter many. But this year we put in a huge effort.

The Environmental Award was part of the Industry Development Category of the Pride In Print Awards.

Specialty Products Category

Tee Shirt With a Kick Takes Judges’ Eye

A New Zealand screen printing company has shown it can do as well as the international opposition, producing a tee-shirt that amazed judges in taking out the Specialty Products Category of the Pride In Print Awards.

The Kicking Imprint tee-shirt features a three-dimensional boot, complete with laces. It was entered by Screen Printing Solutions of Hamilton.

Judges speculated on the labour hours required to create such a striking piece of clothing.

Senior screen printing judge Chris Knuckey said that the tee-shirt was a well-executed example of a technique using a special ink which puffs up to create a three-dimensional effect.

“They added embellishments such as eyelets and laces on the boot. The text is sharp and there are no flaws. Doing all of this in any kind of big production run would be demanding in the extreme.

“This company is going from strength to strength each year,” he said.

Screen Printing Solutions owner Stephen Wallace said that the company’s plan was to be an industry leader.

“Lot of hours were involved, specially for test printing. We had a vision, we sat down with the customer to create a 3D print and eventually we combined three print technologies which was a mission and a half.

“The customer response is ‘we are just absolutely stoked’. The textile market is smaller than the rest of print, so to get people to brand their product by using shirts is awesome. The staff are wonderful. They’re committed.”

The Kicking Imprint tee-shirt was entered in the textiles section of the Specialty Products Category, which also included sections for limited edition and fine art prints, specialty finishing products, personal stationery and printed industrial products.

Innovation Award

Sealing Tape Opens New Opportunities for Print

A Christchurch company that worked with its customer to develop a sealing tape that combines high-visibility branding with a tamper-proof security solution has carried off the Pride In Print Awards Innovation Award.

GEON Christchurch got plaudits from senior design judge Kerenza Smith who said the seal was an example of a company taking existing technologies and combining them to produce a new opportunity for the print industry.

“The ease-of-use of reel-fed adhesive and high-resolution colour printing have been brought together in this innovation. The company has worked with the client to produce a sealing tape that is highly-visible, and can carry the customer’s logo or whatever additional high-quality graphics they need to have printed.

“The design makes it tamper-resistant and will show if there has been a breach of security. And variations of the seal have been produced to go with products that are refrigerated or frozen for example.

“Overall, this is a clever innovation that is both cost-effective and opens a new area of print production,” she said.

GEON Christchurch sales manager Antony Morris said his team was very proud of what had been achieved.

“There are a lot of companies out there that are doing a similar type product to what we’re doing, but it’s the way that we’ve done it that has made it outstanding. The fact is we’ve taken a fairly standard type product that we would supply to the majority of the market and flipped that round to a specialised offering.

“It is how do we take something that is already outstanding and turn it into something unique?

“Clients love the fact that we can do this along with what else we can do for them, It’s brilliant market strategy and the clients love it. Let’s hope that it goes for years to come.”

The Innovation Award was part of the Industry Development Category of the Pride In Print Awards.

Display Print Category and Digital Process

Bravery in Swatch Design Gets Display Reward

A swatch display for Colorsteel panels has won the Display Print Category and Digital Process prize in the Pride In Print Awards for Auckland company Digital River Limited.

The display featured swatches of Colorsteel representing the different colours available of the product, which had to be perfectly aligned and mounted on a printed display board.

Digital River managing director Rex Lee paid tribute to his staff for the final product.

“Once you got started, you had to keep going and carry it off perfectly. The operators did so and produced a fantastic finish. The customer was delighted with the finished product,” he said.

Senior judge Ron Cuddy said the job was impressive. “The finishing on this piece is outstanding. The swatches are perfectly aligned and square. They achieved very good colour density and beautiful drop shadows, with perfect registration. This was a very difficult job to complete well, involving two passes through the printer and an enormous amount of work to get it set up perfectly.

“It was a brave task for the company to undertake,” he said.

The Display Print Category featured banners, posters, showcards, billboards and applied graphics.

Business Print Category and Screen Process

Brilliant Business Card Pushes Boundaries of Print

Producing a beautiful business card for a plastic surgeon, that combined clever printing and embellishments, has won the Business Print Category and Screen Process prize in the Pride In Print Awards.

The Julian Lofts Business Cards that won the award for Auckland company Permark Industries looks simple but in fact is highly complex.

Screen printing judge Chris Knuckey said both the front and back of the plastic card were printed, and with see-through text, it was essential that the right-reading and reverse-reading images matched up perfectly.

“This is a first-class job. It also involved metallic embellishments and the whole thing required a great deal of skill to bring it together. These guys I notice are getting better in their work very year. They are pushing outside the boundaries with the quality of their work,” he said.

Mr Knuckey described the card as “one of the best pieces of work I have seen in a long time”.

David Jack of Permark said that the elaborate card was a result of the designers working together with the technicians at Permark.

“They obviously had a high regard for what we do and they came with the ideas and put it to our people to see how we could make it work. The end result was a credit to everyone for finding the solution,” he said.

The Business Print Category featured stationery, annual reports and company prospectuses, security printing such as stamps, cheques and plastic cards, and business forms.

Labels Category

Minimalist Label Makes Big Impact On Shelves

A minimalist wine label design that has “consumer appeal on the supermarket shelf” has taken out the Labels Category in the Pride In Print Awards for Auckland company Panprint.

The Tiki Sauvignon Blanc 2009 label impressed judges with its quality of finishing and was said by senior labels judge Mike Davis to have achieved true excellence in its production.

“Anything that goes to market with a label is relying on that label to make an impact on the shelves. Designers strive to make something look different and stand out.

“This label may be minimalist to the first look, but it the cleverness is in the finishing. In terms of a print job the registration and embossing is as perfect as you can get,” said Mr Davis.

Panprint general manager John Lowther said that the minimalist design reflected where the New Zealand wine industry was at.

“The New World wines are different from the Old World. The French and Italian labels are more elaborate. But this label had to be simple and capture the essence of New Zealand, hence the Tiki concept. The customer feedback we got was that it was exactly what they wanted. It will be a thrill to ring them and tell them they have won and award,” he said.

The Labels Category included sheetfed, reelfed and multi-process labels as well as wine labels.

Sheetfed Process Winner

Ultimate Guide Wins Ultimate Prize for GEON Highbrook

A book of “eye-catching colour and sharpness” that persuades the magazine buyer to pick it up has landed the Pride In Print sheetfed process award for Auckland company GEON Highbrook.

The Ultimate Guide had judges hugely impressed even before they saw it on the judging table.

“I picked up a copy in Taupo and thought it was great,” said one senior judge. “The Ultimate Guide embodies quality and productivity in the competitive publications environment, particularly tourism.

“The ‘pick up and flick through’ aspect is one of eye-catching colour and sharpness, complemented by good stock choice and easy-to-read layout. It has been run on a perfecting press, probably slotted in as a normal production run and quoted with tight margins, and bound with a soft cover.

“In other words, it’s a great-looking, really colourful job.”

The judge said The Ultimate Guide is a model example of excellent commercial print – “This is a production job of substantial quantity and is beautifully presented. It is a credit to the design, prepress, print and bind team.”

GEON New Zealand group general manager Andrew Durrans said the job presented technically-difficult challenges.

“We managed to conquer them and make it look easy. All of the line-ups and special features were in place. Most of all, the client was really happy with the job, which ultimately is what it’s about.

“We’re getting more and more commendation about the quality. I guess, we’re trying to find a point of difference in an extremely difficult market economy where prices are going down and you’re trying to hold a reasonable price for good quality, and I think being able to go to the market with the amount of awards we’ve won this year will enable us to hopefully have that point of difference.”

Finishing Process Winner

Octane Gets It Spot On for Finishing Award

A “peep show” booklet that brought magic to the combination of design, illustration and print has won the Pride In Print Finishing Process Award for Octane Digital of Auckland.

The intricately die cut booklet “Our Little Secret” that was printed by Auckland firm Centurion Print wowed judges with the delicacy with which it was prepared and assembled.

Senior finishing judge Kenny McQueenie said the die cutting had to be “spot on perfect” otherwise the job would have been ruined.

“It was brilliant. There must have been a ton of work gone into perfecting it. This was obviously a specialist job with little or no tolerances for error. If I was the buyer I would be absolutely delighted and proud of the end result, which would compete with any print finishing worldwide,” he said.

Judging convenor Fraser Gardyne said this was a totally Kiwi project that was also entered in the BeST Design Awards last year where it won a Gold Medal.

“Our Little Secret is one of those surprising packages where the designers and printers have really excelled to delight the viewer.

“When you opened this little book that was sealed with a bow, each spread revealed a beautifully-illustrated scene in three dimensions. These were created by paper engineering and skilful binding that allowed the book to open displaying a scene in four layers. The illustrations were die cut in such a way that when opened it gave the impression of depth to the landscapes.

“This is a great example of what is called a tunnel or peepshow book which date from the mid-eighteenth century being inspired by theatrical stage sets.

“The thoroughness and quality of Our Little Secret was exciting to the judges. A magnificent project which reinforces the magic of what great design, illustration and print can achieve,” said Mr Gardyne.

Flexible Process Winner

Learning From Mistakes Nets Major Prize for Sealed Air

Hamilton company Sealed Air New Zealand has shown it can pluck success from adversity in taking out the award for Best Flexible Process entry at the Pride In Print Awards.

Sealed Air’s winning Littleneck Clams packaging work had actually been entered last year, when tiny registration flaws that were only noticeable under expert inspection meant it fell at the final hurdle.

But this year, with the printers having taken the time to get the printing absolutely perfect, the judges could find no fault and duly gave it the top prize in its process.

Judges commented that it was a very good example of what can be achieved using flexographic printing when the subject matter is something that can make or break the final appearance of the finished pack.

“Seafood is very subjective when it comes to what looks fresh and what doesn't. A lot of pre-press work was done on the images last year to create the very dense black background whilst still retaining a product shot that appealed to both the designer and the final print buyer.

“It was also necessary to print very clean fine text as well as ensuring the barcodes stayed clean and functional. Unfortunately last year’s entry showed some minor registration problems that although were not discernible to the naked eye, were there for the judges to see under the very high level of scrutiny that all submitted work is subject to.

“The judges’ comments and feedback were relayed to the printers and they took them to heart as they were disappointed with themselves in having come so close to a Gold Medal last year.

“It was decided that they could do better and a team of guys worked on the plate mounting and engineering fixes to ensure this year’s entry did not suffer the same foibles. The judges recognised this design from last year and immediately looked to see if the previous problems had been addressed. They were pleased to see that this time it was an extremely good example of registration and the detail of the product shot was of the highest quality whilst all the fine details had been retained and printed very well.

“It is a great example of taking the judges’ comments on the chin and then deciding to work together to produce an excellent example of flexo printing,” the judges said.

Sealed Air New Zealand print manager Damion Robinson said that the win was still was a surprise, despite the indications given from the previous year.

“We just put it together well – it came off really, really well off the press, then design-wise and effort-wise from the operators, we got the result.

“In our last Pride In Print Gold a decade a go, we had a very similar comment. With the quality of the work, people didn’t believe it came off a flexographic press.

“It is one of very few jobs that just looks remarkable. Our client was just stoked with it. After last year as well, that feedback was given to them and they just couldn’t say enough.”

Special Commendation for Promoting the Print Industry

Creative Juices Flow Over “Pimp My Paper”

A Spicers Paper promotional competition that created a “buzz” among the graphic design community, has inspired New Zealand’s creative talent while also proving an invaluable marketing tool for printing stock, process and technique.

Earning both a Gold Medal and Special Industry Commendation in the Industry Development category at this year’s Pride In Print Awards for Switch Design, the campaign invited designers to turn a blank die cut “CardBot” into something memorable.

Marketed to a database of about 600, the promotion attracted about 150 entries which were uploaded for an online voting competition. The four winning designs -- “SauceBot”, “KingBot”, “GorillaBot” and “CowBot” -- were then physically produced as fold-ups in a process which united design, print, embellishing and packaging.

Spicers Paper marketing manager Carolyn Lockstone said the aim was to re-engage the design community with “ink-on-paper” and bring the focus back onto some of the older crafts such as foiling and embossing.

“They had to download a CardBot image and ‘pimp’ it -- the world was their oyster in regards to an embellishing and printing process,” said Ms Lockstone.

“We took the four winning entries and worked with them to create the actual printed piece. So they might have said ‘we want to do this embellishment with it’ and we said ‘okay if we look at this paper we are putting it on, what if we do this, this and this’. So between us, the printer, the CardBot designer and our agency, we printed the four Bots.

“We still get enquiries today about the Bots and people have collected the series. While they all got voted and the four winners were announced at the same time, we then rolled it out over a period of a month. So people knew the order in which they were coming out and we were getting phone calls -- ‘has the GorillaBot been done yet’ -- they became quiet iconic, to the point that we are thinking of rolling it out in a different format.

“It was a really great promotion that does show the old crafts of printing. Today it is all about ‘four-colour, cheap-as-chips’ and this was about ‘it doesn’t need to be expensive’ -- one foil and one colour and you’ve created this amazing little thing. A lot of the new-age designers don’t know about half of this craft.”

Switch creative director Chris Jones believes the campaign has succeeded in stimulating the imaginations of budding designers.

“The problem we have -- and especially as younger designers come through the ranks -- is that the printing craft is being lost to digital,” he said. “I not only mean digital as in online, but also young print designers work in a simple space of CMYK and either don't know of all the printing techniques available or haven't been exposed to them. They will often turn to CMYK on a coated stock -- boring!

“The concept behind Pimp My Paper was to expose them to as many printing possibilities as we could and also engage with them in order to get them thinking and interacting with paper too. So we came up with the concept of Pimp My Paper and created CardBot -- our tireless crusader for the revival of old-school ink-on-paper craftsmanship.”

Mr Jones said the promotion was a challenging one for his company which provided a considerable learning opportunity.

“In regards to earning a Special Commendation, we feel good about it. When printing projects which have a lot of techniques, there's a lot of research, working with the printers and press-passing etc that go into these jobs.

“Being perfectionists, we are often at the end of the press checking it so it’s nice to be recognised for that. A big chunk of the job is the concept, but execution also played a large part in this project.”

Pride In Print judge Fraser Gardyne describes Pimp My Paper as simply “outstanding”.
“This concept was great because the company reps introduced the competition to designers and they then encouraged designers to enter and vote,” he said.

“Finally, they were able to deliver the winning entries to designers, which was a great way to keep the Spicers Paper brand and stocks top-of-mind for designers.

“This was a truly memorable promotion which involved people at all levels -- whether they entered their concepts, voted, made the CardBots, talked to the paper rep, were educated about the print opportunities or just had a chuckle at the cute entrants and winners.

“A great promotion on all levels that really demonstrated the involvement and difference print can make.”

Pride In Print chairperson Scott Porter said only occasionally does a promotional campaign come along that is “just too much fun to ignore”.
“Pimp My Paper was definitely one of these,” he said. “Although fairly simple in concept, the buzz it created and the creative juices that it got working within the industry were refreshing to see.

“The many and varied entries showed how much thought and imagination went into the process and it was hard not to come across someone who wanted to bounce their ideas off you.

“I always find it fun to be a part of our industry when this sort of campaign comes along, as it embraces so many of the good things about being in the print game and brought the best out of many of our great people -- even the judges in the Self-Promotional Category could not wait to get their hands on the samples provided and discover the many little quirks that had been included within them.

“Well done to all involved for bringing some fun into our working day during the tough time that 2009 was.”

ENDS

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