An image from Body of Work’s 2015 calendar, which won three awards at this year’s Bennys, including a Special Innovation Award for printing
Australian photographer Bob Armstrong’s design and print agency, Body of Work, has again broken its record for the number of gold wins at the American Premier Print Awards, taking home no less than 17 Bennys. Body of Work says it put forward 42 entries in this year’s competition, and came away with 42 awards – including 17 gold, 14 silver and 11 bronze – with multiple wins in some categories. It won the most best of category awards for any company in the competition for the second successive year. Its wide format entries, including art prints, calendars and posters, are printed inhouse on a modified Roland DG using Versa UV technology. The company also partners with Reef Digital, The Digital Centre, Sydney Allen, Allkotes and Avon Graphics to produce glossy brochures, business cards, stationery, flyers, book jackets and annual reports. Armstrong says the printers and embellishers it works with have a collective goal to reach new heights in premium print, and Body of Work uses the international awards to benchmark its bespoke products. He says, ‘it is a tight-knit group, who have been with me since day one.’
Body of Work’s annual report, best of category winner in the 2014 Benny Awards, featuring model Hannah Fraser
Body of Work is an arm of photography, video and website design agency ArmstrongQ. Armstrong says its brief is to push existing boundaries for its products and the print industry as a whole; it specialises solely in creating bespoke products and meeting the needs of clients who insist on world-class results, regardless of cost. He says perhaps the most significant entry in the awards for the agency this year is its latest cross-media annual report, which brings photos on the page to life in video using an iPad app. The app, called Body of Work Live, was developed inhouse and can be downloaded from the Apple Store. Armstrong says he believes it is vital for the industry’s future to embrace cross-media publishing and add new levels of engagement to print. He tells AP, “My belief is that to make print viable again in the eyes of the buyer we have to go cross-media. That is what Body of Work are doing now, everything we produce has video embedded. “We went down this path because I thought that unless someone does something print is just going to be a relic. I hate to see my beloved print dying. “There are others out there experimenting with cross-media for various purposes, but our app only works with our work. And it has allowed us to produce a 200 page annual report in just 32 pages, because at the centre you can download the accounts. “The next development we are working on will be pointing the app to text, and it will read it back to you in six different languages. This is the new direction for us, and for the whole industry.” The new 2015 Body of Work calendar was back amongst the gold winners for the third successive year, in the calendars, and diaries and desk calendars categories, and was further honoured with a Special Innovation Award for Printing. The calendar consists of a Bakelite holding structure, with printed aluminium leaves for each month that slide in and out. Armstrong says that at A$30,000 it would be among the most expensive calendars in the world.
This Benny-winning art print features an embedded video, which can be accessed with an augmented reality iPad app
One of the pages in this year’s calendar entry, he adds, took eight days to print, with 16 layers in perfect registration. The calendar has been designed to work as a wall or desk calendar and won the Benny for both categories. Body of Work’s calendars have taken out Best in Show for the past two years in a row – this year’s award will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago in September. Armstrong says the chance of picking up the honour for a third year in a row is ‘beyond his expectations.’ He says, “We use these awards as a benchmark, as a guide to see if we are heading in the right direction, so we can continually refine our product. The results again this year seem to show that we are doing that. How long can we keep competing? We must continue to benchmark in the interests of progress. But this year’s outcome has been pleasing.” Three art prints with tactile layers and embedded videos that can be accessed via the iPad app also received awards. Armstrong says these prints will be added to the range available in the company’s Casino Collection rental programme, where a new photograph is displayed every month. He says the agency is currently better known in the US than it is in Australia, is developing a ‘cult following’ in southern California, and negotiations are progressing to display the work in a Las Vegas casino. Taking away nine golds at last year’s awards, and a swag of five the year before, Body of Work now has 31 Benny awards to its name. This year it won best of class in: • Booklets (four or more colours, non-printer) for ‘Shapes’ • Flyers (one, two or three colours) for an invitation to a black and white photo exhibition • Service catalogues (four or more colours, non-printer) for its Casino Collection catalogue • Product catalogues (four or more colours, non-printer) for the Casino Collection catalogue • Book jackets, for ‘Visions of Three’ • Diaries and desk calendars, for its 2015 desk calendar • Magazine series, for ‘Free Spirits’ and ‘Shapes’ • Newsletters (one, two or three colours) • Business and annual reports (four or more colours, printers with 20 employees or less) • Posters, for a Rolls Royce poster • Calendars • Digital printing – brochures and booklets (four or more colours), for ‘Free Spirits’ • Business cards • Stationery packages (four or more colours) • Print / graphic arts self-promotion, for its newsletter • Direct mail campaigns, business to business, for the Casino Collection • Special innovation award – printing, for the Body of Work calendar
The Body of Work ‘Visions of 3’ dust jacket
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