Creativity and innovation stand out at PrintWeek Awards 2023 Jury Week
13 October 2023: The Jury Week for PrintWeek Awards 2023 was held on 4-6 October at The Studio located in the Haymarket Sac headquarters in Voltas Premises in Mumbai. Unlike the previous editions of the show, where Jury Day was a daylong affair, this year, it has been spread across three days so that respective Juries get more time to evaluate the samples received for the Awards and discuss the tech-specs and innovations as well as specialisatons in greater detail.
Awards recognises the very best of printing, whether it’s innovation, quality, or out-of-box approach to the medium, in 33 categories across Performance, Quality, and Special Industry Awards. There are 18 Performance Awards, 11 Quality Awards and 4 Special Industry Awards.
Awards ceremony will be held at The Westin Mumbai Powai Lake on 30 October.
This year, the Awards received 700+ samples for the Quality Awards. For the Jury Week event, the categories were divided into three groups. There were separate sets of Jury members on each day. All print/packaging jobs were coded and the identity of the company was kept a secret. The Jury carefully reviewed the entries, discussed their choices with their fellow Juries, who are experts in their fields and then made the final selections.
On the first day of Jury Week, the members included Dibyajyoti Sarma; Mukund Moghe; Naju Hirani; Praful Akali; Rajnish Shirsat; Sudha Ganapathi and Surendra Babu. The seven members judged the samples submitted in seven categories.
On day two, the Jury team comprised Elodie Nerot; Geet Nazir; Neeharika Paul; Nikhil Phadke; Ritesh Uttamchandani; Supreeth Sudhakaran and Yatin Patil. They judged samples in seven categories. This included two Innovative categories.
On day three, Jury members Amit Saurkar; Deepti Kshirsagar; Fazal Farooqui; Pratik Rane; Raju Kalgutkar; Sheetal Dandekar and Soma Roy judged the samples for five categories which included the heavyweight packaging categories.
Commencing on the samples on the first day, which focused on books and commercial printing, Rajnish Shirsat, Co-Founder and CEO, R&S Enterprises, said, “The quality of work has gone up drastically with a lot of small players from small towns emerging. This is a great sign for the industry. I observed the post-press improving with many value-additions and neat finishes. Digital printing has improved tremendously, and different papers used for book production and the consistency in printing were impressive.”
There were many samples like self-adhesive labels, cartons, pouches and wraparounds. What grabbed the eye of the jury members was: lightweighting versions of the same product; usage of low-migration compliant inks for indirect packaging; printing on the reverse side of shrink sleeve applications.
Elodie Nerot, Creative Director, Elephant Design, said, “The samples we saw today highlight how packaging converters are pushing the boundary of what is traditionally possible in print. It was a revelation for me. I was excited to witness the different possibilities of packaging design.”
Deepti Kshirsagar, Chief Design Strategist, TCT Strategic Branding, said, “Being from a creative field, initially I was expecting some good designs. But when I started discussing with the jury members, I was amazed by the speciality ink features. What blew my mind was the ink that gives a funky radium effect when UV light is passed through it. Also, the experimentation with multiple substrates as well as the structure of the packaging item.”
Noel D’cunha, Managing Editor of PrintWeek and WhatPackaging? magazine said, “Highlight of Day Two was to see converters and label print firms team up with materials manufacturers to advance the use of alternatives to plastic packaging. Earlier this was a utopia, today we saw industrial production. Potential applications included sachets, pouches and stand-up pouches as well as labels and cartons.”
The PrintWeek Awards 2023 partners are Bindwel; Bobst India; Boxtech Bangalore; Canon India; Esko; Farb Technologies; Focus World Tours; Heidelberg India; Hi-Tech Inks; Indas Analytics; Kala Jyothi Process; NBG; Numex Blocks; Orient; Pidilite; Pratham Technologies; Sangeeta Poly Pack; SigLoch; Sona Papers; Stelda; TechNova and Vinsak.
www.printweek.in
