In-Print Contest

In-Print Winners Selected

After a tough day of judging, the winners of In-Print 2008 have been selected at last. Out of nearly 570 entries, the five judges picked 86 winners. These awards will be presented at a banquet during the IPMA 2007 conference in Tunica, Miss., taking place June 4-7. Among the top winners were the University of Oklahoma (11 awards), the University of Delaware (7 awards) and the University of North Texas (6 awards). Collecting five prizes were the University of Texas-Houston and the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS.

In-Print, the only printing contest exclusively for in-plants, is jointly sponsored by In-Plant Graphics and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA). The judging of the contest took place March 31 in the offices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Printing Division, in Salt Lake City. LDS staff members had spent weeks sorting and cataloging the nearly 570 entries.

Fresh snow covered the ground on the morning of the judging, but the hardy judges (one of whom had a 90-mile drive) all made it. They were:

• Ron Anderson, Weber State University
• Larry Clements, Redlands Community College
• Kevin Field, City of Virginia Beach, IPMA Awards Chairman
• Terry Johnson, Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators
• Brent Pulley, formerly of Banta, now with xpedx
• Dale Smith, Utah State University

To find the winners, judges scrutinized every piece, inspecting each fold and using loupes to check for poor registration and hickeys. It took a full day for the judges to complete their inspection. From among the Gold Awards, the judges picked one Best of Show winner. The winner's name will be kept secret and revealed at the awards dinner during IPMA's conference in June. (See below for list of past Best of Show winners.)

To make their final decisions, the judges considered the degree of difficulty required to print a job, often consulting the entry forms to see which equipment was used. (i.e. A four-color job printed on a single-color press might outweigh a similar job printed on a four-color press.) The level of difficulty was also an important consideration. Perfect crossovers never failed to impress. On the other hand, some jobs that had excellent printing, failed to win prizes due to poor stitching. Several excellent pieces featured a single hickey, which also ruined their chances for a prize. And more than one in-plant succumbed to the temptation to enter a folder stuffed with individual printed pieces. Just one blemish on one of those pieces was all it took.

For a glimpse of what the judging is like watch this video.

Over the years, the judges have provided a number of helpful tips on what makes a winning entry. One thing the judges love to scrutinize is the folds on entries to make sure both halves of the sheet line up perfectly. They often eliminate entries that are cracked along the folds because they were either folded against the grain or folded without first being scored. This is the most common reason pieces are eliminated. Also, many entries were eliminated in the past because poor quality copies were submitted, when better copies almost certainly existed.

Here are some other reasons that entries were thrown out. Did you have any of these problems with your entries?

• Holes and missing dots in solids, possibly due to a piece of dust landing on the plate during platemaking
• Spots and specks, especially in company logos
• Poor ink coverage
• Color variation from page to page, particularly noticeable in company logos or headers that appear on consecutive pages
• Color variation between stationery, envelopes and business cards
• On multi-page forms, the lines on each page must line up with those on other pages
• Out of register printing
• Front-to-back registration off
• Doubling: when ink from the first blanket transfers onto the second blanket and gets printed on the paper again as a ghost image
• Mottling: spotty, uneven printing in solid areas
• Too much powder used, which leaves a gritty, unpleasant feel on the paper
• Bad folds
• Track marks on paper
• Inserts that don't fit together right
• Items placed in the wrong categories
• Design problems like: bad letter spacing; crooked lines of text; fuzzy photos
• Pages printed upside-down

On the entries in our non-offset categories, here are some of the problems judges encountered:

• Images were not centered
• Roller marks on page
• Color consistency changed from page to page
• The darkness of the toner in the text portions of the piece changed from page to page
• Unfolded press sheets were submitted, not a finished product

One more tip: Pieces that include a number of different parts (e.g. a direct mail package filled with loose pages, or stationery submitted with a business card and envelope) have not fared well in the past. You increase the chance that the judges will find an error. It's best to enter the single piece of which you are most proud.

For example: One in-plant entered a direct mail package filled with loose pages, some of which had enough blemishes to disqualify the whole entry. But if the pocket folder had been submitted by itself, the judges agreed, it would certainly have won in the folder category. So pick your categories wisely. And simplify.

Often, many in-plants enter the contest right at the deadline. As a result, they don't properly inspect their entries and submit the best copies. This has cost several in-plants prizes, since if they had only sent a copy with better folds and crossovers, they would have won. Instead they were eliminated. Many items have been tossed out for infractions as small as a missing dot in the middle of a solid, or cracking on a fold that hadn't been scored.

You should examine all four copies of your entries in detail--don't just grab any four from the top of the shelf. Look at the folds and registration. Are they perfect? Are there any visible hickeys? Look carefully, because if you don't take the time to scrutinize your entries, be assured, our judges will.

The best advice is to get your press operators involved. Show them the entry form when it first appears each November. Get them interested in saving flawless samples--and put them aside far in advance of the deadline.

Also, and this is extremely important, when filling out the entry form, please check off the correct category. A brochure is not a folder. IPG utilizes interns to sort the entries and they generally aren't familiar enough with printing to question the category you select. So when judging day comes and the judges see your brochure in with the folders, it is often disqualified--especially if they have already judged the brochures.

Similarly, don't enter process color work in the one-color/multi-color category. (You should know the difference by now.) Your mistake often goes unnoticed until judging day, at which point it's often too late to switch categories.

Awards

In-Print winners will receive elegant plaques, which will be presented at the next IPMA conference. From all of the Gold Award winners, the judges will pick a Best of Show winner, and that in-plant will receive a crystal obelisk.

Here's a list of Best of Show winners through the years:

• 2007 - Conoco Phillips
• 2006 - University of Delaware
• 2005 - University of Missouri-Columbia
• 2004 - University of Delaware
• 2003 - University of Missouri-Columbia
• 2002 - Phillips Petroleum
• 2001 - Boeing
• 2000 - SAFECO
• 1999 - University of Missouri-Columbia
• 1998 - Hitachi Data Systems
• 1997 - Boeing
• 1996 - Phillips Petroleum
• 1995 - Brigham Young University
• 1994 - Phillips Petroleum
• 1993 - Boeing
• 1992 - USAA
• 1991 - Boeing
• 1990 - Boeing