The 26th Australasian Catalogue Awards will close at 5pm today Friday June 9, after the deadline was extended due to high demand. The awards this year feature a record 50 categories, including two new ones - Direct Mail and Best Young Student - and a set of New Zealand-specific categories for the second year running.
Kellie Northwood, CEO of the Australasian Catalogue Association, says the ACA had been 'overwhelmed' with entries. "Last year was our 25th year, and we achieved record numbers that year. We’re matching the same numbers this year, which is brilliant – I’m so excited. We’ve had great buy-in from retailers and the wider print community," she said.
Northwood says the quality of entries was very high, which she attributes to entrants engaging heavily with the judging criteria. "We have a great quality of entries across all the categories. I think in the main it’s because we’ve built more and more on judging the effectiveness of their print pieces, and retailers have really embraced that. It’s not a design award – it’s about how effective the catalogues were," Northwood said.
Judging will take place over the month of June in Melbourne, Auckland and Sydney, and the awards ceremony, hosted by Libbi Gorr, will be held at the Melbourne Concention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) on Friday August 25. Northwood stresses it's not too late to enter yet, and urges entrants to submit by 5pm. "You’ve still got a few hours, so get them all in," she said.
The deadline was last week extended from May 31 to today, due to the high volume of entries.