In-Print 2002 Winning Tips

With about 100 In-Print prizes being awarded, your odds are pretty good. We'll try to make them even better by revealing some secrets to winning.

Why you should enter

by Bob Neubauer

You say you don't do much color offset work any more? You don't think your in-plant has produced anything worth entering in In-Print 2002?

Think again.

In-Print has changed. Last year we added a host of new categories for the "non-offset" in-plant.

And guess what? These categories are still a secret to most in-plants.

The year these categories were introduced, only 10 percent of the entries were in the non-offset categories. Though this was low, it was good news for those who entered their copier jobs there, like the Southwest Florida Water Management District. The three-employee in-plant won first place in the technical documents category for its reclaimed water guide.

"It gave us a lot of good exposure," testifies John Frascone, manager. "We're doing a lot of digital work and we wanted to promote it."

This award for a digitally printed product was just the ticket to help the shop promote its capabilities. It is now hanging in the lobby of Frascone's building, drawing more attention to the in-plant every day.

The non-offset categories are a great opportunity. In-plants of all sizes have DocuTechs and color copiers. Last year the winners were both small in-plants like Frascone's and large shops like Ace Hardware and the University of Washington.

So instead of pinning all your hopes on your best four-color offset piece, and pitting it against 30 or 40 equally excellent jobs from other in-plants, enter a few items in the non-offset categories. The competition is much slimmer.

Other Winning Secrets

No matter which categories you enter, you won't win a thing unless you make it past the judges' first round of scrutiny. So here, in no order, is a list of problems the judges have found with past entries. In every case, entries that had these problems were eliminated:

• Color variation from page to page, particularly noticeable in company logos or headers on consecutive pages.

• Color variation between stationery, envelopes and business cards.

• Spots and specks.

• Holes and missing dots in solids.

• Mottling: spotty, uneven printing in solid areas.

• Out-of-register printing.

• Bad front-to-back registration.

• Doubling: when ink from the first blanket transfers onto the second blanket and gets printed on the paper again as a ghost image.

• Too much powder, which leaves a gritty, unpleasant feel on the paper.

• Bad folds (where both halves of the sheet don't line up).

• Sheets folded against the grain or folded without first being scored, producing cracks along the folds.

• Track marks on paper.

• Inserts that don't fit together right.

• Items entered in wrong categories.

• Process color jobs entered in the one-color/multi-color category.

• Design problems like: bad letter spacing; crooked lines of text; fuzzy photos.

• Pages printed upside-down (believe it or not, such flawed pieces have been entered).

What The Judges Like

Based on past experience, the level of difficulty of a job is much more impressive to judges than simple eye-catching beauty. A four-color job printed on a single-color press might outweigh a similar job printed on a four-color press. Likewise, such tricks as using a split fountain always catch the judges' eyes.

Here are two other areas that judges have traditionally given extra points for:

• Scoring before folding.

• Crossovers that line up perfectly.

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. Enter the single piece of which you are most proud.

Speaking of being proud, imagine how much pride your operators will feel when something they created wins an award. What a great way to boost morale.

"It kicked our department up a couple of notches, that we were recognized in the industry," says Sandy Miller, of Limra International, referring to her in-plant's first place award in the non-offset newsletters category.

So don't miss the opportunity to bring some of that pride to your in-plant. The deadline is January 31. Don't miss it.

Download the entry form from our In-Print page).