Chicago, Ill. – GPA, the market leader in substrate solutions for digital, offset, and wide format printing, announces the winners of their 2016 Print & Design Contest, which has been honoring creativity and excellence in printing since 2004. Companies across North America submitted their entries on GPA substrates to compete in five product categories for the Best of Category award; from those winning entries, one was chosen as Best of Show. Additionally, six entries were presented with the new Award of Distinction for making a lasting impression on judges.

Cockrell Enovation won this year’s Best of Show Award for a jumbo-sized booklet featuring famous Texas firsts, including the corn dog, margarita, and Liquid Paper^®, which they first introduced at their open house event. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company wanted to showcase the powerful capabilities of their HP Indigo 10000 press while shattering people’s perceptions about the limitations of digital printing. They collaborated with Pinkerton Design and freelance copywriter Brian Pearce to develop and execute the winning idea, and the finished booklet has been met with enthusiastic approval since its debut.

“For us, winning Best of Show means that people embrace the direction our business is heading in,” said John Cockrell Jr., Vice President at Cockrell Enovation. “When you’re dealing with what could be considered new technology, you could have a customer base that wants to fight it. This win shows that we’re heading in the right direction as the type of company we want to be and the message we want to lead with. From concept to design through production, everybody truly understood the potential of this piece, and this win reinforces that we succeeded in what we set out to accomplish.”

Cockrell Enovation selected two GPA papers for this project: Ultra Digital^® 100# Midnight Black Uncoated Cover and Ultra Print™ 70# White Uncoated Text. They printed the black sheet with white ink and selectively layered color for a striking cover design, and chose full-page images for the inside text pages to demonstrate how flawlessly they could execute heavy ink coverage and color consistency to their brand-conscious clients. 

“The GPA uncoated sheet has always performed above and beyond what other text and cover sheets have. We realized our booklet was going to have very heavy ink coverage, and working with GPA papers, we just knew it was going to be the perfect sheet,” said Cockrell Jr. 

The Best of Category Winners are:

• Carlson Print Group of Eden Prairie, Minn with design by The Meyocks Group, Inc. – Non-Adhesive Synthetics
• Colornet Press of Van Nuys, Calif. – Pressure Sensitive Synthetics
• Gateway Printing & Graphics of Hamburg, NY – Papers: Uncoated & Uncoated/C1S & C2S Boards
• Maskell Graphics, Inc. of Burbank, Calif. – Pressure Sensitive Papers

The Award of Distinction Winners are:

• Advanced Printing Services, Inc. of Bristol, Conn.
• Aldine, Inc. of New York, NY
• AlphaGraphics of Evansville, Ind.
• Chromatic Lithographers of Glendale, Calif.
• Quantum Group of Morton Grove, Ill.
• ZUZA of Carlsbad, Calif.

This year’s contest was judged by a panel of four industry experts: Gary Greis, Sales Manager at Graphco; Kari Somers, Dean of Students at Columbia College Chicago; Michael Johnston, President of Top Graphics in Maryland Heights, Mo.; and Trish Witkowski, Chief Folding Fanatic at Foldfactory. Entries were evaluated on uniqueness of design, number of substrates utilized, complexity of production, application use, and quality of printing. 

GPA’s Print & Design Contest is an annual opportunity for printers and end-users to showcase their best work and gain industry recognition. For a submission to be eligible, it must be from an actual job or promotion that was printed by a GPA customer on a qualified GPA substrate. Each year yields new and unique examples of the opportunities available with GPA substrates.