Let's have pride in our product: Print 21 magazine article

Everybody loves the Pride in Print awards but that doesn't make them perfect by any means. As the industry continues to change around us at break-neck speed, Derek 'Fearless' Fretwell argues that it's about time we came up with a new way of recognising excellence within the industry.

The drupa experience approaches when all eyes in the worldwide industry turn towards Düsseldorf in the country of 10 minute beer pouring, excessive quantities of white asparagus and the inevitable results of both. It is also the place where the future of the industry is sometimes revealed. I say sometimes, because after attending five or so of the monster exhibitions, I do not ever recall seeing a sign saying "Repent! The Internet is Coming" until it had already changed the face of graphic communications forever.

We, on the mechanical side of graphic communication (as opposed to electronic), are still wrestling with the implications of a graphic communications industry in which lithographic offset printing will not be required. I have no doubt at all that at this drupa or the next, digital print technologies will demonstrate capabilities that will eventually outperform all current offset, screen, flexo and gravure processes.

With this in mind, and knowing that this article will be published just before the event, I would like to talk about the New Zealand Pride in Print awards. I am a great supporter and believer in the value of the awards and, at various times, I have served on the management committee, as the patron's representative in the very early days, and as the sponsors' representative over recent years.

No less than three organisations were led by me into various levels of support for the awards and note that all of those organisations continue to find value in those sponsorships long after my advocacy of them. In short, I believe they are important to the industry.

We have issues
But there are issues with the awards, and despite the very best efforts of the committee, judges, management and even with the overwhelming support the awards receive from the industry at large, those issues keep resurfacing year on year. So, with the benefit of some distance now, between me and both the industry and the organisation, I boldly go where no man has gone before and criticise this much-loved institution. Please direct all hate mail to Patrick.Howard@.... No, no, seriously, I am attempting to be constructive.

I have had customers with so many Pride in Print certificates they simply do not have the wall space to display them. Even as a sponsor I found, after the first three or four, the number of certificates was a little overwhelming. Perhaps someone could offer a miniaturisation service as we do for other medals! Levity aside, it is a problem that needs to be addressed if the value of entry and achievement is to be maintained.

In addition I have never been able to figure out how you judge a plastic bag against a newspaper against a cardboard box against a brochure etc etc. But I understand and appreciate the hard work the judges do in trying to maintain objectivity, how difficult the whole process is and I salute you all.

It is my view that these perennial issues with the awards are a reflection of what the awards are actually awarded for. With very few exceptions they are judged and awarded only on process criteria. Thus we have many categories, reflecting the many processes our industry encompasses and the interest groups that the awards committee must satisfy. If process is being awarded, it simply must be so, or else we will not have any awards at all.

So at the awards evening we have the marathon of recognising excellence in all the processes that printing encompasses. Fifty seven of them this year with the usual measure of ambiguous ones. The first one I will mention is wine labels and why wine labels have a separate category? I would have thought producing a label for an olive oil bottle is just as challenging (if less exciting to consume). There are several such examples throughout the categories and listing them all would do nothing but excite a response from the aforementioned process-based groups.

The wine label example though, is an indication of the emerging problem of awarding excellence in process. The category exists because the process of producing wine labels has changed, and therefore this award is no longer for the label printing process, but for the product. The same could be said of annual reports, calendars and several others.

Show me your products
The very simple fact is that the processes of printing are undergoing irresistible change. There already exists in New Zealand technologies capable of producing virtually all of the products of lithographic offset printing without using any of the processes that the Pride in Print awards honour.

It is possible, right now, to produce flexible packaging that is not flexo or gravure, cartons and cases that are not 'printed' yet still display quality graphics, books without using 'ink', newspapers and magazines without using a 'press', stationery, annual reports and sheets of printed material, bound by any method, up to or more than 16 pages, that are not offset printed at all. Let's not forget the textile, signage and display products, over or under 1.5 meters that are not screen printed, and did I mention labels? The fact that the currently preferred method of production may still be the 'traditional' one is simply where we, as an industry, sit on the technology change curve.

It is no longer sufficient to have a category called digital printing when digital printing is all of the above. If the Pride in Print awards are to continue to maintain relevance with the greater industry they must soon complete the change from honouring process to honouring product. It has already started as the wine label, calendar, stationery and other examples demonstrate. My suggestion is that we complete this process before it passes us by. If we do not, we will likely become ignored as the New Printing Industry leaves the Old Printing Industry behind. For an idea of how it happens ask any letterpress printer, hot metal typesetter, or look for those categories in the current awards.

We must stop peering through the lupe at dots and start looking at the effectiveness of the products that we are producing. Instead of 'coldset - newspapers (daily or weekly)' or 'Flexo mid web (601 to 1000mm machine width) - substrates other than paper, reverse' what about 'Best broadsheet periodical' or 'Best flexible package'.

'Best business publication' could easily include annual reports, stationery, corporate profiles, prospectuses et al, and if there was a 'best book' award you wouldn't need a sheetfed section at all! Calendars? Aren't they a business publication?

Of course product awards would mean a totally different judging criterion. Best Publication, Best Bag, Best Book etc implies honouring more than the process used to produce it, as it should. But it does not mean we need to measure the quality of the journalism or the taste of the peanuts. An empirical, easily-understood judging system could be developed and published for each product category. Here are some non-exhaustive suggestions for one possible product category.

'Best periodical smaller than tabloid' is magazines. Whether web, sheetfed, E'static, E'photographic, Dodi, Cij, E'coag or flexo (yes they are all current processes). If it's a paid periodical smaller than tabloid this is where it is entered and out of a possible 100 it is judged on:

1. Fitness for purpose <40%. How effectively does the product serve the purpose for which it was produced? A 20,000 run might score higher than 20, or might not.
2. Product fidelity <30%. Does it look the way it should, regardless of process? Can you read it? How is the layout and design? Typography? Contones? Note I did not say 'Rosette structure' or 'sharpness'. Such terms are process-related and we are judging product.
3. Effectiveness 20%. This should include cost-effectiveness and information from the purchaser. This is where the effectiveness of the differing processes should be scored. This is where 'personalisation' fits in; it's a data processing function nothing to do with printing, any digital press can print it.
4. Result <10%. Did it work? Was the 'best periodical smaller than tabloid' ultimately successful? As advisers to the publisher and producers of the product we must bear some responsibility for the business result, not just the process result.
5. This is by no means a perfect or even particularly well-thought out list, but the point is made. If we continue to award processes in the way we do, we either keep expanding process categories (eg personalisation!) or restrict ourselves to an ever-decreasing share of the greater graphic communications industry.

Let the customer be the judge
Now some of these things are not easily judged by practitioners in the way that processes are. I suggest the mix of judges be altered to include specifiers, purchasers, advertisers and generally those who pay for the products we produce, what I call customers. There are many around to whom our industry is a very important part of their business. They would welcome the chance to participate in raising the standards of their products that we produce. They are not the enemy but part of our industry, so let's use them.

I have given one or two quick examples of how product-based awards could be constructed. Looking at this year's categories I cannot see how our process-based awards can continue for much longer and would love to see some debate about the future. Let's put 'Sheetfed, four or more colours - not bound' in the history bin with 'Screenprinting, textiles' and get relevant again.

For those of you off to the land of sausages, sauerkraut and spargel, think about it. Think about it when you see corrugated board printed Cij, as you watch breadbags produced E'coag or read the daily drupa news (E'static?). Our processes are expanding so fast that soon we will need two nights to recognise them all and a separate building for the medals. Think of the dual hangovers.

Good thing the products and customers are still pretty much the same.

This article is published just before the Night of Nights on May 16th. I will be there dazed and delirious with the rest of you, conspicuous with my press pass, camera and Print 21 penguin suit. Please remember my slavish years of service to the awards, the constructive nature of the article, and above all, don't shoot the messenger.