Flying High Again

Tension filled the air.

After more than eight hours of examining printed pieces for flaws, the judges of In-Print 2001 were looking at three flawless entries, trying to decide which one deserved to be named Best of Show.

In the running were a colorful annual report from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a sharp-looking hard cover book from Brigham Young University and an eye-catching marketing booklet from Boeing.

All three in-plants were former Best of Show winners. They each knew how to produce quality products. This didn't make the judges' job any easier.

They scrutinized each entry using a detailed checklist to rank them. The result: Two of the entries had tied.

So they voted. It came up 3-2.

Boeing had won again.

Five-time Champion

In the past 11 years, the aerospace giant has won Best of Show a staggering five times. And no wonder: Boeing's Precision Printing department—the offset component of Boeing's massive in-plant—is known for producing top quality marketing material for the company.

Precision Printing was overseen for years by the late Chuck Okerlund, who supervised Boeing's last Best of Show project in 1997. Today, Nancy Bowen is manager, with Bill Walker overseeing Boeing's entire 123-employee print operation.

Boeing's plan to move its corporate headquarters to Chicago is not expected to impact the in-plant, according to Planning Lead Bill Kennedy, though he says the operation will soon move from its current leased facility to a Boeing-owned site.

This year's Best of Show winner is a 26-page booklet highlighting the features of Boeing Business Jets. What makes it stand out is the sharp reproduction of the photos and the consistent color from page to page, even on the many crossovers. A fold-out back cover lines right up with the rest of the book, which is stitched and folded almost perfectly.

The booklet, called "New Dimensions in Business Travel," was sent to corporate and individual customers interested in buying a jet. Such a high-dollar purchase demanded a top quality marketing piece.

"A lot of care was taken to make sure it was right," explains Kennedy. The client, Boeing Business Jets, is very particular, he says. In the past BBJ sent its jobs to outside printers, but Precision Printing eventually convinced it to keep them in-house.

"We proved to them that we can do the quality that they need," he says. Winning the Best of Show award only proves this point more vividly.

Bowen has nothing but praise for the 22 employees of Precision Printing, all of whom played a part in producing this piece.

"I'm very, very proud of my group," she says. "They work hard. Quality is very important to them."

Producing A Prize Winner

The job was designed by Deborah Hunt in Boeing's design department. It came to the in-plant on a disk along with photos, which were scanned on the shop's CreoScitex EverSmart scanner and placed on the digital pages.

After the customer approved the digital proof, a film proof was output on a Fuji ColorArt proofer. From there, the shop's Fuji Screen 3100 imagesetter produced film, which was used to make plates on a Stoesser platemaker with Olec lights.

About 6,000 copies of the booklet were printed on a four-color, 28x40˝ Heidelberg Speedmaster. The toughest part, Bowen says, was matching the color from sheet to sheet.

Boeing has a full bindery, but work volume at the time forced the shop to send this job to Puget Bindery, in Kent, Wash., for finishing.

"We had our bindery people work with theirs so they understood exactly what we needed," says Kennedy.

The bindery matched up the crossovers exactly, a tough task since nearly every spread had photos crossing from page to page.

"They did a fine job on the crossovers," lauds Kennedy—though he retains a little credit for the in-plant's employees. "The job had to be constructed properly for those crossovers to fit properly.

"We don't always run jobs with so many crossovers," he adds, "but I wouldn't say it's out of the ordinary."

For winning Best of Show, Boeing received a glass obelisk at the recent IPMA 2001 conference—another trophy to add to its collection of Best of Show awards. "We really were very happy about it," says Kennedy.

by Bob Neubauer

Additional Reading:

Best of Show 2000 Winner

Best of Show 1999 Winner