Awards help printers land new clients and escape the commodity trap, according to winners from last Friday's NSW PICAs.
Offset Alpine won its third Printer of the Year title after clinching seven categories at the annual state awards night. Momento Pro came second with four gold medals followed by Green & Gold Printing with three.
Green & Gold has already notified clients of its PICAs medals and changed its email signature to reflect the success, owner Adrian Blessington told ProPrint.
"I think [awards success] is a really good thing to have in your backpack and makes you feel like you have a point of difference," he said.
"We're trying to build a bit more value into what we do for people instead of being considered as a commodity."
Blessington said the Artarmon-based firm was already thinking about next year's PICAs and would make a point of keeping samples of standout jobs over the next 12 months.
Momento Pro general manager Libby Jeffery said the photobook specialist considered wins in the PICAs and other awards to be an important marketing tool.
"For us, it's very highly valued and you'll see on our homepage we have listing of our print awards," she told ProPrint.
"We've started using the line 'Australia's most awarded photobooks'. With photobooks being relatively new, the way we can differentiate ourselves is promoting the premium quality and one way to prove that is to show they've been recognised by industry awards."
Seven firms walked away from the NSW PICAs with two gold medals apiece: Avon Graphics, Bright Print Group, Evolve Printing, Impact International, Sony DADC, Southern Colour (NSW) and Watermarx Graphics.
There were another 12 firms that each bagged one win: Bell Press, Body of Work, Collotype Labels Griffith, Geon, Goldcraft Embossing, Graphitype Printing Services, Impresstik, Lindsay Yates, Mercury Creative Print and Design, Oxford Communications Group, Pure Colours Digital Imaging and Rawson Graphics.
No medals of any colour were awarded for 'occupational health and safety initiatives'. There were no entries in 'flexographic printing' and 'web offset printing – coldset' and no winner in 'packaging – other'.
The event was held at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre and drew about 360 guests.