PICA chairman Trevor Hone launched the night’s activities with an assurance that the “best of the best” system, in which the various states’ PICA winners feed into the National Print Awards, is working successfully.
He paid tribute to the PICAs judging panel, headed by Rod Urquhart, and noted there was an increase in the volume of entries this year, with more than 340, and thanked Printing Industries’ Victorian president Ron Patterson and the organising team of Lisa Scott and Lynne Trensky for their work in planning the presentation night.
No public event would be complete nowadays without reference to the financial crisis, but Hone reflected that the gyrations of the currency markets, shares and superannuation are not beyond the ambit of what Australia’s printing profession can deal with.
“Printers are a resilient bunch, used to running their businesses in hard times,” he said. “We can plan for most things, but not for the ‘x-factors’ like 9/11, the Asian currency crisis, SARS… and now this. We must do the best we can and reshape our businesses as we go.”
Printing Industries national president Jim Atkinson, who recently attended the 9th Forum of Asian Pacific Graphic Arts Technology, said Australia’s printers are faced with challenges in a region that supplies 30 per cent of global print. Thailand alone sent around $100 million in print exports in 2006, he noted.
Banks that seek to shore up their “green” credentials by offering customers an online option for statements were firmly in the crosshairs of Bernard Cassell, president of the Australasian Paper Industry Association, who lambasted “demonstrably false” claims against printing, an industry that plants trees, not, as the mythmakers would have it, cuts them down en masse, he said.
Calling for a sharper profile for printing in the corridors of power, Cassell quoted Industry Minister Kim Carr who famously described Australia’s printers as the industry that seems to be the least adept at “communicating its needs to government”.
A “no-alcohol” policy during the award presentations segment kept noise levels down, a welcome change from recent runnings of the National Print Awards, and made life a little easier for vivacious presenter, Channel Nine’s Gorgi Quill, who pronounced the variously complex industry names with aplomb. (She even got the Swiss pronunciation of Ferag right the first time, until somebody mistakenly “corrected” her.)
In the PICA hierarchy of Diamond, Emerald and Ruby awards, only the Diamonds were presented, and three Victorian companies accomplished Diamond trifectas: Bambra Press (booklets, catalogues; book printing; digital printing), Finsbury Green (annual reports; book printing; Paper Round environment award), and Manark Printing (multi-piece, direct email; self-promotion; innovation).
Energi Print received Agfa’s Innovation in Printing accolade for a mini-sheet of stamps commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Australian Light Horse Charge at Beersheba, presented to Energi’s Mark Bennett by Agfa’s Garry Muratore.
The PaperlinX Design Award went to the Geon Group for its work on brochures for architectural firm Hayball, and was presented to Geon’s Neil Lynch by Brian Longmore of PaperlinX. The Heidelberg Award for Excellence in Craft went to Bambra Press for the Rhodes & Beckett Summer 2008 catalogue, presented to Bambra’s John Wanless by Heidelberg’s Shane Hanlon.
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