Picture Perfect

As a unanimous vote among packagePRINTING’s 2006 Excellence Award judges, Hayward, Calif.-based Rotocolor’s “Marilyn Merlot” wine label is this year’s Best of Show honoree for its superior flexographic printing. “It really shows where flexo can go,” said Roy Webb, national sales manager, Mark Andy. “It has fantastic quality and could sit side-by-side with the lithographic print.”

“The piece is exceptional and shows how far along flexo has come,” said Bob Waddington, general manager, UVitec Printing Ink. “The skin tones are amazing.”

And the skin tones are important on this piece, because this is a wine label which garners a famous photo of Marilyn Monroe. Two strategically-placed red, sparkling ribbons were printed on an overlay for the consumer to peel back to reveal the complete image of Monroe.

Even though each of the this year’s six judges voted for this wine label as Best of Show, it almost never made it into the competition. “We are the kind of company that doesn’t like to show off, but our ink vendor was pushing us to enter this label. We looked at it as if it was another printing job; our customers expect this kind of quality on everything we do,” said Thomas Vargas, general manager, Rotocolor. “It’s because of our great vendors, and I feel our pressmen are the very best and are not afraid to tackle jobs like this. Our customer always thought that to get quality like this, it had to be printed offset. But we did a test run to show how far flexo has come and he was sold instantly!”

He added this 200-linescreen wine label was printed on a 10˝, 8-color Mark Andy 4150 press with DuPont plates and UV inks from Water Ink Technologies. Also, for the image, Rotocolor used Fasson BOPP and film overlaminate, and for the peel back, it used Fasson clear BOPP.

The rest of the field

This year, packagePRINTING received nearly 180 entries from more than 30 different companies. The judges said they had a difficult time boiling down the entries to pick the Best of Show winner. Commenting on the this year’s competition, Jim Flynn, printing technology, Gallus, said “Everything on the winner’s table [first place] is excellent.” In total, there were 24 first place, 23 second place, 16 third place, and 26 honorable mention awards.

For Best of Show, the judges narrowed down the field to three finalists. The runners up were an “Avery Lane” wine label printed by Collotype Labels and the “2006 Calendar” by McDowell Label and Screen Printing Co., Inc. The wine label took first place in the Wine Labels - Offset (Process) category and the calendar took first place in the Labels - Combination Process category. McDowell Label also won two other first place awards and two honorable mentions.

In the Specialty Category - Technical Achievement, first place went to Zumbiel Packaging for the “Tran-Z-Print™ Kraft Target 10+2 Racing Promotion J-Card,” which used a unique ink formulation for an ink-on-paperboard application that allows for heat transference of an image on the box to an appropriate piece of clothing. Second place went to McDowell Label and Screen Printing Co., Inc.’s “Chicago Collection.” The entry was a 30-color job which required four passes through a 10-color, all-UV press with servo drive and reinsertion capability. But that’s only after the substrate was first developed with the help of Accucote. It had to be a high-gloss stock on both sides, along with a special removable adhesive. n