Galley Club Awards get down to Earth

Local printers show they are up there with the best of them at the 2009 Galley Club awards for excellence in book and magazine production. Print 21 editor, Simon Enticknap, went along to read between the lines.

Local book printers picked up a swag of prizes at the Galley Club awards for excellence in book and magazine production last week with the likes of Griffin Press, BPA Print Group, and McPhersons Printing Group, as well as SOS Print & Media Group, Hannanprint and Offset Alpine in the periodicals section, demonstrating that they have what it takes to compete in terms of quality against some of the heavyweights of Asian printing.

Local printers, Ligare and McPhersons, also demonstrated their commitment to the home-grown industry by stepping up to support the awards night as joint main sponsors.

In his welcoming speech, Galley Club president, Michael Schulz, acknowledged that it had been a tough year for the local publishing industry but said that this only reinforced the importance of organisations such as the Galley Club in providing an environment where industry people can meet to network and learn.

“The Galley Club wants to offer you a forum where you can discover things,” he commented. “I get a lot out of it and I hope you do too.”

Pictured: Michael Schulz, Galley club president (left) presents the award for Australian printed Book of the Year to Robert Stapelfeldt of McPhersons Printing Group (centre) and Sam Grimmer, art director, for Jewellery.

MC for the night, ABC personality James O’Loghlin, deftly kept proceedings moving along and offered his own humorous explanations as to why books will always win out in competition with new forms of media (he reckons that books, for example, are perfectly designed to be thrown at someone, something that’s not so easy with a computer).

The 150 guests at the awards night, comprising publishers, printers and equipment suppliers, saw awards presented in 17 main categories covering sheetfed and webfed books and magazines as well as digitally printed items. According to the judging criteria, entries were judged on the function and quality of their design, production, prepress, printing and binding in accordance with established industry guidelines.

McPhersons Printing Group picked up the Award for Innovation in Publishing and Printing for a digitally-printed colour coffee table book called Coloured Women, while Periodical of the Year went to GQ Magazine, published by News Magazines and printed by Offset Alpine.

The coveted Australian Book of the Year award was awarded to a limited edition book called Jewellery produced for Sydney prestige jewellers, Fairfax & Roberts, and also printed by McPhersons Printing Group. This boutique publication combined both stochastic and analogue screening as well as single pass six colour Hexachrome printing for the cover.

But while Jewellery was a sparkling success, the award for heavyweight publication of the year – and Book of the Year – went to a vast tome called Earth which lived up  to its eponymous title with 580 pages measuring 610 x 470 mm (including several 1.8 metre wide double gatefolds) and weighing in at a massive 19 kilograms.

This stupendous publication, printed by Sing Cheong in Hong Kong, is billed as the most spectacular limited edition atlas in the world and features hundreds of full-colour maps and images from every country around the world. And with only 3,000 copies printed, it’s proof again of something that computers can’t match (although you might not want to have it thrown at you).

Pictured: Andy McCourt, Print21 columnist, enjoys a double gatefold spread from the mighty Earth book depicting the Big Bang and the formation of the universe.