WSU Program Takes Top Prize

As he sat at the IPMA awards banquet last month, watching the video of the In-Print contest judges selecting the Best of Show winner, Steve Rigby was surprisingly calm. Two of Washington State University's Gold-winning pieces were among the final four, and he was feeling rather confident.

"My gut told me it was coming," reveals Rigby, director of Printing Services at WSU's University Publishing office.

He was right. Out of the 17 Gold winners in the non-offset categories, WSU's gala program booklet was picked as the Best of Show winner. The 56-page book is perfect bound and features photos of top university donors. The cover is printed on a metallic cover stock, which gives it a unique, iridescent sheen that makes colors appear to sparkle and change from different angles.

Tough Competition

Having looked at all the other winners on display during the awards the reception, Rigby knew his in-plant's piece had been up against some stiff competition.

"There were a lot of pieces that were deserving of that award, quite honestly," he acknowledges—such as a calendar from Briggs & Stratton that used Kodak's Dimensional Printing capability to create a raised effect; and a spiral-bound book from The University of Texas at Austin. But the colors on WSU's program were just a little more vibrant, the judges said, and the binding was flawless.

Thanks to social media, Rigby says, most of his staff knew about the in-plant's victory before he returned to work with the trophy.

"There was a great excitement in our shop on Monday when I came back," he reports.

The 45-employee in-plant, with 20 part-timers, has been entering the In-Print contest for decades and amassed nearly 100 awards over the years, Rigby says—but never the top prize. He brought the glass Best of Show ­obelisk around to each person who had worked on the project and invited staff to his office to watch the video showing the judges picking their piece. The in-plant held a special celebration for the client that ordered the program, the WSU Foundation.

Putting it All Together

As the fundraising arm of the Pullman, Wash., university, WSU Foundation turned to the in-plant to print its gala program. The gala is an annual appreciation dinner held to honor the university's top donors.

"It was for their biggest event of the year," remarks Rigby. "It just had to be perfect in every way."

He and project coordinator Cathy Montagne collaborated with the client ahead of time, going over paper choices and sizes. They chose a metallic paper called Curious, from Arjo Wiggins, for the cover, and used 100-lb., FSC-certified Cougar opaque text from Domtar for the inside pages.

After the foundation's designer, Dave Hoyt, had designed the program, using photos supplied by donors, and sent the file to the in-plant, a proof was run on the shop's HP Indigo 3500. Upon approval, operators Dave Nowak and Alvin Yuen printed 600 programs on the 3500, pulling pieces throughout the eight-hour print run to check the quality. Running the metallic stock required some adjustments to the press, Rigby says, but it ran without any problems.

Pages came off the digital press in collated book blocks, which were then cut by Neil Johnson using a Polar 115EM cutter. From there they went to the Standard Horizon BQ440 perfect binder, where Johnson and Ken Sundvik applied a hinge score to the cover and bound the books.

Pride in Their Work

Rigby praises the operators, who all have decades of experience. "They know quality," he declares. "They take a lot of pride in their work. We're lucky to have them."

Long on the forefront of technology and innovation, WSU's University Publishing office was the first university in-plant to obtain FSC chain-of-custody certification. Its flourishing Web Services unit complements the print operation by handling everything from design and delivery of HTML e-mails, to content management systems, to Web site development and web hosting. A few years ago the in-plant launched Coug Prints, a mobile printing program that allows students to send files remotely to any of the self-service output devices on campus. The most recent addition, Rigby says, is a new UV coater—which should make next year's In-Print entries look better than ever.