Going for the gold - Print 21 magazine article

People like to compete and printers are no exception. Winning is important, a terrific boost to the ego, both personally and corporately, while being recognised as the best can make a difference in business as well as in life. But how can you tell who is the real winner when the rules of the game keep shifting? Patrick Howard looks at the complicated rules of the print award games.

The 2008 25th National Print Awards in Melbourne will likely be the last of their kind. After a quarter of a century of usefully providing a venue for the printing industry of Australia to gather annually to recognise the industry's best examples of print, the NPA is moving towards becoming a higher profile event. A meeting of the chairmen of the PICA awards - state-based Printing Industry Craftsmanship Awards - has agreed in principle to work towards integrating the different contests into one framework. If the scheme ever gets off the ground - and in light of parochial biases and sponsorship territorial claims, that's not a given - future NPAs will likely be black-tie events, possibly held in Canberra, where the industry will attend a 'best of the best' award ceremony with PICA winners competing for the national title.

The notion of a genuine national competition with everyone involved has been a long time coming and if the initiative does succeed in getting off the round, much of the credit will be down to Scott Telfer, current chairman of the NPA, who originally framed the idea as a possibility. One of the industry's most persuasive diplomats, Telfer has succeeded in getting the concept to the stage of serious discussion with the ball now firmly back in the courts of the various state committees. This is where the heavy lifting will need to be done and no one should underestimate the complexities and difficulties that lie ahead.

For print awards, national or otherwise, are a serious matter in which local pride, individual and corporate egos and a good deal of sponsorship money and profile are at stake. At the NPA level, Heidelberg, Agfa and PaperlinX jealously guard their long-term roles as principal sponsors. Around the country, other suppliers such as the Currie Group, Kodak and Fujifilm have been major sponsors for many years. This represents a solid investment in profile and identification with the awards. It will take a lot of diplomacy to finesse any substantial change in these arrangements.

At their best, print awards celebrate the enduring craft traditions of the printing industry, allowing peers to review one another's work and award recognition for a job well done. Awards provide companies with the chance to distinguish themselves and highlight their commitment to a quality ethos. They allow the winning companies to promote themselves as award-winning suppliers to their customers, a marketing advantage that many people believe cannot be overestimated in these days of fast-changing markets and shifting customer loyalties.

Print awards take up an inordinate amount of time and effort from volunteer judges, professional organisers and, last but not least, the printing companies that enter their work in hopes of winning the gold. They generate a lot of controversy and disagreement, create situations in which judges have nearly come to blows over the criteria and, on at least one notorious occasion, have provided the opportunity for someone to walk away with one of the valuable prize-winning entries. Over the years, awards ceremonies have provided social events for lots of networking, mutual backslapping, sponsor freebies and occasionally, like the 2007 Sydney NPA, all the ingredients of a potential riot.

Despite or because of all this, there seems no slackening in the appetite and enthusiasm of the industry for print awards. In recent years the number has increased significantly as seemingly every association from the label printers of LATMA to the screen printers of SGIAA to the in-plant printers of NIPPA have instituted their own award schemes, all predicated on awarding a variation of the craft vision of quality printing.

Into this expanding plurality of awards the NPA committee seeks to launch its vision of consolidation, winnowing the 'best of the best' towards awarding one supreme prize that can truly be said to represent the print award winner of that year.

The era of savage dog printing
Part of the cultural problem facing print awards is that the technology of the presses and the conditions of the market are driving the industry towards a hands-off manufacturing paradigm and away from craft-based intervention. Massive sheetfed and web offset printing plants are becoming automated factories where shifts of machine minders come and go with little or no interruption to the thundering output of the high-speed presses. The telling witticism about the savage dog that accompanies the installation of every new press to keep the printers away from the controls points towards a new mindset that is at odds with the traditions of a skilled printer's autonomy.

Digital print celebrates a 'green button' form of printing where the unskilled operator needs to know no more than how to click the print icon on the desktop. Hub printing operators tell you that the first time they are aware of the arrival a new job is when it starts emerging from the digital press, often folded and stitched, having been created and initiated web-to-print automatically. Indeed, part of the economics of web-to-print digital production is predicated on the notion that if an operator's intervention is required there will be no profit in the job. The idea of judging such jobs one against the other in terms of the quality of printing stretches the notion of comparison to absurdity.

But however much the drive towards automation changes the industry, there are still plenty of jobs - over 60 percent of all printing according to some statistics - that are identified as complex printing where skilled intervention is required. Away from the long magazine runs and the simple A4 digital sheets, there is a universe of printing material that requires concentration, problem-solving and production experience to get right. No matter how well the technology operates or how far up the food change it automates the process, for the majority of printing work, skilled trade and craft skills are needed.

For many there is no question but that printing is still a craft. Scott Telfer is one. A recent entry into the ranks of print company operators with Southern Colour (NSW), he will tell you that putting ink on paper is not an easy task and that despite what customers may say about their urgent deadlines, if the job is flawed, "there is always time for a reprint". With experience on both the supply and production sides of the industry, most recently with Geon (formerly Penfold Buscombe), Telfer has set out in his business to supply a high quality printing service to discerning print buyers. It is a sector he believes is in danger of being lost in the rush to consolidated manufacturing and one where craft is king.

Taking pride in print New Zealand style
Taking pride in this craft-based approach to the industry is well illustrated in the elevation of Matthew Hinman as winner of the Supreme Award at this year's Pride in Print awards in Christchurch. The thoroughly craft-oriented bookbinder was presented with the ultimate recognition for his part in the production of a limited edition of 1,000 copies of an award winning photographic book, Andris Apse - Fiordland. The $4,500 per three boxed volumes came with their own set of archival gloves. Jim Clayton, who tragically died before the award ceremony, was the printer.

The accolade to Hinman was warmly applauded at the awards ceremony, even though most of those present came from parts of the industry far removed from the fairly esoteric world of fine art printing. According to Sue Archibald, awards manager, the industry in New Zealand is very supportive of the whole idea of quality-based printing awards. She cites the original motivation behind their establishment in 1993 to demonstrate that the local printing industry is able to produce printing the equal in quality to anything print buyers could access offshore.

Aggressive offshore sourcing, especially for books and lately in packaging, engenders a sense of solidarity in the industry, although the local competition is ferocious. Despite the continuing industry consolidation underway in New Zealand, the number of entries in the awards has remained fairly stable as new companies seek to assert their craft qualifications. Sue Archibald identifies the benefits of winning as providing a boost to staff morale as well as the marketing advantage of being able to use the prize-winning logo on stationery and advertisements. She tells of a print company that allowed one of its printers to take the medal home to show his family and was never quite able to get it back again as it made the rounds of proud relatives. Eventually a replacement was sought from the organisers.

Raising the bar
According to Sue Archibald, the Pride in Print competition can also lay claim to contributing to the general rise of print quality standards throughout the New Zealand industry.

"When I look back at the winners in '93 and '94, I recognise that they would not win today. The standard has very much improved and I think Pride in Print is partly responsible for that," she said.

It is a claim echoed in Australia where the difficulty in deciding between the top percentages of entries is now a perennial headache for the judges due to the exceptional quality of the printing. Despite the fact that, in many years, the NPA does not award prizes in certain categories where no entries were of sufficient quality, overall the standards are generally accepted to be on the rise. How much of this is due to the development of craft skill and how much is because of the advances in press, inks and substrate technology is a moot point. What is much debated is how one piece of almost perfect printing can be distinguished from another and at this level, apart from the conventions of competition in having to produce a winner, does it really matter?

The dilemma is clearly seen in the judges' comments at this year's South Australian and Northern Territories PICAs held in Adelaide: On a number of occasions the high level made it quite difficult to narrow the field down to a gold winner. When time came for the final judgement of the best overall production, the five judges were locked. It was necessary for each member of the panel to resort to the special assessment score sheet for the five salient aspects of the criteria on which the entries are assessed. This method equates the diverse nature of the products to obtain an overall winner. The judges participated in this detailed scoring method with the final entries separated by only four points out of a possible one hundred points multiplied by the five judges.

It is just this type of line ball decision that provoked industry commentator, James Cryer of JDA Recruitment, to call for a change in the emphasis of industry awards away from a quality criterion. In a recent letter to www.print21.com.au he wrote: Recent correspondence on this year's NPA event... again reminds us of the disconnect that seems to exist between the criteria used by the judges, and the perceptions of excellence that exist in the mind of the common man. We still seem to be clinging to a narrow definition of "excellence" as defined by the ability to pile a series of dots one upon the other, like a pile of pancakes that doesn't topple over.

This definition, while comforting in a "technical" sense, and providing a security-blanket to those of yesteryear, does not recognise the new dimensions of excellence that we, as an industry must adopt, if we're to move forward.

Comparing apples with...
Cryer's call for a new style of 'printing business' awards has been picked up by many of the PICA committees, although not all. The inaugural Victorian PICA Awards this year, while still based on excellence in craft printing, also instituted an environmental award. To no one's surprise Drago Zoric of D&D global, perhaps the most awarded printer in Australia and internationally (the US-based Bennies gave him a special award for winning the most awards), claimed top honours, in this case a Diamond Trophy and the Agfa Award.

The Print NSW Business Awards on the other hand have moved away from the focus on craft to recognise business innovation in four categories:
* Environmental Initiatives
* Education and Training
* Innovative Business Practice
* OH&S Initiatives

Queensland has also instituted awards for business excellence and environmental management in addition to the traditional PICA print quality awards categories. The Tasmanian PICAs award 80 categories of print excellence including one in recognition of design.

Perhaps no one does the PICA awards better or enjoys it more than the Western Australia industry, which this year staged a Roman-themed extravaganza with a Kylie Minogue song and dance show to hand out 107 awards in 36 categories. It also initiated a new format Environmental Award. Four hundred and ninety people piled into the Perth Convention centre for the celebrations, which can justly claim to be the highlight of the industry's year in WA. How much interest the notoriously independent Western Australians will have in conforming to a NPA format in pursuit of national profile is debatable.

Perhaps that is what print awards are all about, a good party where peers and competitors can come together to celebrate their business life. It may not even matter who wins what so long as the industry can recognise itself as a vibrant and well-established sector with good traditions and a bright future. Rather like Switzerland, print awards can prove so useful that if they did not exist we would likely have to invent them.