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A high level of interest in the way the Pride In Print Awards are judged has been revealed by a roadshow of judging seminars conducted throughout the country. Seminars have been held at various centres from Christchurch to Auckland, at which the Pride In Print committee has listened to rank-and-file printers, learned what questions the industry wants answered and explained in more detail how the Awards are judged.

Questioning from the floor at the Auckland evening put on by the four 2006 Patrons, Fuji Xerox, Nova, Spicers Paper and Heidelberg, and held at Heidelberg’s Mt Wellington headquarters, was indicative of the high level of interest in the Awards.

Over 90 people attended, from all sectors of the printing industry.

Awards Manager Sue Archibald gave a brief background to what the Pride In Print Awards are all about, including a video of the successful Rotorua gathering this year, which attracted an audience of over 800.

She emphasised that the Awards are about the concept of celebrating and promoting the excellence of print in New Zealand.

“That is why we need to put the very best of our work in front of the judges, and promote ourselves in the market place. We need to get more print buyers to stop taking work offshore, and instead place their orders within New Zealand. The best way that we can demonstrate to them the quality of which New Zealand is capable is to have our most excellent work on show.”

The new convener of judges for 2006, Grant Letfus, emphasised how the judges required more information to be sent with entries.

“Every year, we get entries that do not give us sufficient information to assess the processes which were undertaken, or to judge the degree of difficulty. This year we had one entry in the ‘Innovation in Print’ category which listed the print process as ‘secret’. That gave us no opportunity to judge the technical difficulty of the work.”

Mr Letfus outlined how the technical expertise in the Awards had expanded, with
the result that the original judging panel of 12 had expanded to 54.

Danny Redhill, general manager of Bryce Francis Graphics in Wellington, was able to speak from the perspective of an unsuccessful entrant for a number of years, who finally broke through for Award success.

Now a judge, he went into detail in explaining how in the first assessment, entries are culled 30 to 40 per cent by judges in the specific area of expertise for that category. In subsequent culls, examinations become more intense, and judges from other areas are brought to give advice on things such as finishing and binding.

In an era of computer-to-plate technology, judges pay special attention to areas of craftsmanship. Errors such as hickies and cracking down the spine during folding bring bad marks. Another issue is consistency of corporate colours.

“I would suggest trying to do corporate colours in spot colour,” he advised. “If you’re trying to do them in CMYK you will have extra difficulty in maintaining consistency over multi pages. Even in a spot colour, this is an area you must look at carefully.”

Mr Redhill also advised the audience to pay particular heed to the matching up of photographs over folds; folds not being absolutely square; over-inking leading to screens filling in; creep during jobs and the quality of the perfect binding of books.

“One job that we had this year was heading for a Gold Medal but in the final analysis, we found one staple that was crooked. That was enough to downgrade to highly-commended,” he said.