Western Web is just giddy to announce we’ve been honored with four awards at Printing Industries of America’s, Web Offset Association (WOA) 2013 Print Awards Competition. We received two firsts and two seconds. Western Web has won seven first place awards in this competition in four years. No other open web printer in the whole damn country has come close.
To put this in perspective, there was an ad in a print trade magazine for years. It was a two page ad. Page one had a photo of a WOA first place trophy with the caption, “You know how hard it is to win one of these.” Flip the page and there is a picture of two trophies, caption, “So you know it is amazing to win two!” Hundreds of printers vie for a relatively few awards each year. In my 23 years at Paradise Post we won four firsts at WOA. At the time, that was the most won by any printer. I believe it is still the second most won. Western Web? Seven firsts in four years.
While it is a printing award, nobody wins unless they are printing spectacularly designed stuff. Luckily, our customers got game.
The most amazing award winning partnership in all of web printing is ours with Murphy’s Markets . We print their sales flyer. We have won ten regional and national printing awards, including two first place WOA awards and two first place awards at Printing Industries of Northern California – including a Best of Show. How cool is it for a local grocery store and tiny little printer to win so many awards competing against the monster market chains and massive printers? Very.
J the Jewish Newsweekly of Northern California won a first place award for us this year. J is a wonderful magazine that has published continuously for 120 years and has printed at Western Web for seven years.
We’ve won three awards for printing North Coast Journal. I thought we had a guaranteed first place entry this year, but we received a second. What? Only a second? Um, reality calling, please pick up. That means The Journal won as the second best weekly newspaper printed in the entire USA in 2012. Not bad for an all Humboldt team of designers and printers.
We submitted Chico Area Recreation District for the first time this year as we printed the gloss covers in house on our new Ryobi DI Press. We won a second place in the combination sheetfed and web category, which makes it the very first award won in that category completely produced at Western Web.
Nobody succeeds by winning awards. We achieve such success as we have by having amazing people working here, really good equipment, a winning attitude and absolutely wonderful, talented customers. If you have these things, winning awards is just a happy side effect.
