Each year, the PIAG Print Excellence Awards honor companies whose work represents the best of printcraft and the best of technology in printed material.
The 1999 awards celebrated the competition's 21st anniversary. And what a year it was. Eighty-four printers across Georgia submitted 1,222 entries.
The quality of the work was amazing, said Robert Havrilla of Jefferson/Keeler Printing Co., St. Louis, Mo., and one of the three judges.
"The caliber of these entries was tremendous. There's a way you go about judging. You go through and pick out the bad ones first, but this time it was hard to find any bad stuff. So we had to take the other approach; pick out what we thought was best and reach a consensus. That led to some pretty long discussions. We worked into the night, later than we expected to. When it got down to three of us voting, it was 2 to 1 a lot of the times."
In addition to Havrilla, the other judges were Wendell Burns of Jones Printing Co. in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Dr. Page Crouch, professor emeritus of Clemson University.
Havrilla, a 35-year veteran of the industry who has judged competitions for 25 years, said the difficulty of the judges' task reflected both the high quality of printing in Georgia and the number of customers who demand this level of work. "Overall, it was some pretty difficult stuff."
From The One Show to ShowSouth, from the Effies to the Addys, creative competitions are the life blood of the communication arts. But in most competitions, printing is just one of many elements that contribute to the overall quality of a piece of work. For the Printing Industry Association of Georgia (PIAG), printing is a show in itself.
Each year, the PIAG Print Excellence Awards honor companies whose work represents the best of printcraft and the best of technology in printed material.
The 1999 awards celebrated the competition’s 21st anniversary. And what a year it was. Eighty-four printers across Georgia submitted 1,222 entries.
The quality of the work was amazing, said Robert Havrilla of Jefferson/Keeler Printing Co., St. Louis, Mo., and one of the three judges.
"The caliber of these entries was tremendous. There’s a way you go about judging. You go through and pick out the bad ones first, but this time it was hard to find any bad stuff. So we had to take the other approach; pick out what we thought was best and reach a consensus. That led to some pretty long discussions. We worked into the night, later than we expected to. When it got down to three of us voting, it was 2 to 1 a lot of the times."
In addition to Havrilla, the other judges were Wendell Burns of Jones Printing Co. in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Dr. Page Crouch, professor emeritus of Clemson University.
Havrilla, a 35-year veteran of the industry who has judged competitions for 25 years, said the difficulty of the judges’ task reflected both the high quality of printing in Georgia and the number of customers who demand this level of work. "Overall, it was some pretty difficult stuff."
Crouch noted the improved quality from small and medium-sized printers. "There used to be a more visible difference between the larger and smaller printers, and I think those differences are going away," he said. The reason: "The industry used to be more craft-based, and now it’s more technology-based."
Both Havrilla and Crouch noticed a continuation of a trend toward creative use of coatings, where finishes are mixed on a single piece. "You have areas that stand out, that almost have a pictorial quality because they’ll have a gloss over them and other areas that are deliberately dulled, creating textured or surface qualities in addition to the printed image," Crouch said.
The judges measured excellence in printing technique based on seven criteria: registration, ink coverage, paper and ink selection, design and typography, difficulty of printing, bindery, and overall appearance. They judged each entry on its own merit, examining each piece and scoring it on a scale of 1 to 10. Entries with the highest total in each category won the Best of Category. Entries with the second highest score took home an Award of Excellence. The judges were permitted to use their discretion to select more than one Award of Excellence in any category. And in many cases, they did just that.
A lot of competition, a lot of awards.
PIAG is part of a national network affiliated with the world’s largest graphic arts trade association. The Georgia Print Excellence Awards competition is the fourth largest printing competition in the nation.
When it was all over but the grinning and gripping, more than 700 awards were handed out this year. PIAG presented 21 Top Gold Awards, 277 Best of Category (first place) awards and 407 Awards of Excellence (second place).
Top Gold Awards were selected from among the Best of Category winners. In other words, any piece that won Best of Category was automatically eligible to win a Top Gold Award. Thus, these most-sought-after awards, which were kept secret until the night of the awards ceremony, literally represented the best of the best. Since the Top Gold Awards were selected from among Best of Category winners, the pieces could be anything from brochures to annual reports.
Besides the usual excitement generated by the annual competition, the association heightened the thrill this year by restructuring the contest. PIAG added a new level of competition and expanded the Top Gold Awards.
The Special Judges Awards comprised a new area of competition, created to honor printers in seven regions of Georgia. As a result, there was one prize each for Best Printing in Atlanta, Macon, Augusta, Columbus, Savannah, North Georgia, and South Georgia. This new category inspired greater participation from printers of all sizes and with varying capabilities, according to PIAG.
This year’s bigger and better Top Gold Awards included accolades for fine printing in specific areas such as art reproductions and annual reports. This change was made at the suggestion of judges who had difficulty in previous years narrowing down the Top Gold Award winners.
Honoring the impossible.
Two important additions to the Top Gold Awards honored companies that could 1.) Do the impossible, or 2.) Produce exceptional work time and time again.
PIAG created the "They Said it Couldn’t be Done" Award to honor the company each year that demonstrated exceptional craftsmanship in printing. The "Top Notch Awards" were created to commend the printers winning the most Best of Category awards, thus demonstrating an ability to consistently produce excellent work.
One Top Notch Award was given for Divisions 1 and 2; and another for Divisions 3 and 4.
There were Top Gold Awards for Best Process Color, Best Nonprocess Color, Best Execution of Ink, Most Creative Use of Paper, and Best Execution of Print Finishing.
Doing what can’t be done: Dickson’s, Inc.
Havrilla described the Dickson’s Inc., Atlanta, piece that won the "They Said it Couldn’t be Done Award" as a pure work of art.
The piece is a love letter to the letterpress, the world’s first printing process invented by Gutenberg in 1440. The case-bound book features an embossed linen cover and uses papers of different weights, colors, and textures in its celebration of the letterpress process. Its Japanese-folded pages created a primer on letterpress.
"I would compare it to someone giving me the chance to make a classic car from scratch," Havrilla said. "It’s something that hardly anybody can do anymore. The knowledge that you have to have to do it is tremendous. It’s an art that only a few people in this country can do anymore."
The letterpress method of printing brings the type and graphics directly in contact with the paper. Letterpress is valued for its textured effect, an actual depression that results from the contact between the paper and the press.
To keep the competition on a level playing field, companies entered their work in divisions drawn based on number of employees. Division One included companies with one to six employees; Division Two, seven to 15 employees; Division Three, 16 to 40 employees; and Division Four, 41 or more employees.
Division Five was for print finishers, either printers with finishing capabilities or finishing houses. Division Six recognized work from students studying graphic arts in Georgia high schools and vocational schools. PIAG included this latter award to establish connections between students and the printing industry in Georgia and also to plant seeds for future involvement in the industry. The Community Spirit Award went to the printer who produced the finest piece of pro bono work for a community organization.
The competition encompassed 108 main categories ranging from brochures and flyers to full-color annual reports and art prints. The extended categories for web printing and print finishing enabled judges to compare oranges to oranges. And, each category was further divided into a number of subcategories to separate entries by size, process, and or number of colors.
The envelope, please.
More than 800 printing professionals will come together at Atlanta’s Renaissance Waverly Hotel on April 15 for the awards ceremony, known as PIAG’s Celebration of Print Gala. The award-winning work will be on exhibit and the Top Gold winners will be unveiled.
Printers typically bring both customers and key employees to the event, which has come to be regarded as a not-to-be-missed occasion.
"The gala is the largest single gathering of the printing community in Georgia. The awards represent the highest level of individual and corporate recognition that’s afforded to the Georgia printing community," said Ronald T. Williams, of Williams & Canady Printing in Macon and 2000 chairman of PIAG.
Many printers continue to capitalize on their awards long after the gala is over, with their winning work and awards displayed in their offices to honor and inspire customers and employees alike. Those who have won Best of Category Awards go on to participate in the Printing Industries of America International Premier Print Awards competition.
"The most obvious benefit of the awards is the marketing value of being a winner," Crouch said.
Wendell Burns, the judge from Chattanooga and also president of a printing company, said the first reason his own company enters similar contests is to salute employees. "I think that’s the first thing I always had in mind. And then, the customers – it’s very valuable when you can take an award winner that you’ve done a good job on and show the customer the award, or even present them a copy of it."
Havrilla described the awards as door openers. "Customers like to deal with printers who have the knowledge, ability, and skills to produce award-winning work," he said.
One benefit of the competition has less to do with the people in the industry today than it does with those that PIAG hopes will be in the printing industry tomorrow. Williams said a recent poll of high school students showed that most were unaware of the printing industry as a career path, and that those who were aware of it had a low opinion of it.
One of the top priorities of PIAG, Williams says, is to change that.