Printing Contests — Judging is Art and Science

According to Fogel, the first step many judges take is to find any reason to exclude a piece from further judging. Early red flags include bad registration, incorrect folds, poor embossing or diecutting, and insufficient or excessive inking.

“In the second round, we look very critically at the work, and this is the point where the loupes come out, and we check for registration and laminate, the precision in which embossing, laminate and print come together,” Fogel says. “In the next round, we look at complexity. We’ll look at a job and say, ‘This piece is deceptively simple.’ Some of the projects we give the top awards to do not look complicated, when in fact they have a variety of very difficult printing tasks—the very fine ligatures, precise stampings, perfect registration and folds.”