The design and quality of the labels entered into New Zealand’s premiere printing industry event, the Pride In Print awards, has wowed judges, who said the entries this year had set a new benchmark.
Judging took place before lock down began in New Zealand and results will be announced later this month.
Labels made up the largest category in Pride In Print 2020, receiving almost double the number that were submitted last year, a rise from 90 entries in 2019 to 162 this year.
Label judge Tony Wheeler said there’d been a large increase in offset printed entries this year and many of them, including those digitally printed, had a greater degree of embellishment than in previous years, making judging much more interesting.
These included varnishes, foils, coatings, textures, embossing and debossing and even sculptured foil.
While embellishments added to the design and appeal of labels, they didn’t take away the necessity for the basics – good printing with perfect registration and judges were careful to examine the fundamentals when awarding gold medals, Wheeler said.
New machinery was certainly helping to raise the bar in label printing, however in an awards programme it became evident that skill and dedication to producing quality work separated out the jobs that won a medal.
“While new machinery is helping to raise the benchmark, quality is still ruled by the quality of the original design right through to the final execution.”
“In some of the entries the degree of difficulty was very high; the embellishments just added to that.”
Awards manager, Sue Archibald said the label category had always been a growth area for the printing industry and it was pleasing to see that quality had risen across the board.
Archibald said the increased level of participation this year “was a big jump considering the state of the nation” and clearly indicative of the pride printers and related trades were taking in their work.”
