The PrintIT! Awards aims to educate and inspire school children about the exciting and diverse nature of the print and graphics industries, with a view to driving future recruitment of young blood. This year the prize-giving was held at the Xerox Innovation Centre in Uxbridge. Michal Lodej reports.

 

What better way to safeguard the future of the printing industry than to inspire the next generation of school leavers to create innovative print designs? Now in its ninth year, the finalists for the PrintIT! Awards of 2013/14 were selected by a panel of print, media and graphic arts experts that deliberated over entries from the thousands of participating students.

The students were asked to research the print and paper industries and look at the environmental issues as well as technical issues whilst designing a print-based item to promote Fairtrade products. A wide variety of products were submitted, from posters, floor decals, aisle banners and stands, to shoe boxes and mobiles. 

Fourteen students were rewarded with a prize for their work in the main UK PrintIT! scheme, with another four students as part of the separate PrintIT! Scotland scheme also seeing their hard work celebrated. Three students were also awarded for a pilot project with the National Careers Service, which provides advice and guidance to help young people make decisions on the first step of their working life. The project was developed to provide careers feedback from young people and has been hailed a success by those involved.

In total, 21 students were named as category winners for their projects, but it was Ellie Webster, a pupil from St Ives School, who was announced as this year’s Overall Winner for her innovative design, fantastic project work and attention to detail in keeping with the project brief.

Ellie was the recipient of an all-expenses paid week’s work experience at Fairtrade, and received a camera and memory card, iPad, Pantone Capsure, notebook, pen and printer, all courtesy of Xerox, Kodak, Fujifilm, Renz, Pantone, Duplo and Metro Printing.

She said: ‘It was such an honour to be selected, there were so many great designs here today. This whole experience has opened my eyes to the print and paper industries as I would not have viewed them as a career choice until today.’ 

The Xerox Innovation Centre provided a modern and exciting venue that showed the participating teenagers and their parents the innovative nature of the printing industry.

Mike Holyoake, general manager, Xerox Graphic Communications UK, said: ‘I am delighted to be able to host the awards this year. Xerox is best known for its copiers but there is a whole range of services that we offer and now I hope you all take away a good idea of what we do.’

Xerox showed off just how technology-minded it is by inviting guests to test drive the company’s ‘Double’. This is essentially an iPad holder on wheels – a contraption that can be controlled by another iPad remotely. The idea is that it allows employees working remotely to interact and communicate through the iPad.

In the same room, an interactive table was available for the teenagers to use. Imagine the surface of your desk becoming one large interactive screen, and any documents, graphs and videos can be opened and viewed on the table. They can be moved around the table for others to see, or expanded to give everyone a view.

More relevant to the production of print itself, the teenagers were shown around the demonstration room by Keith Neave, Innovation Centre, UK manager. Here a number of machines from the Xerox range were on display.

The main focus in the demonstration room was the iGen 150 production press. A typical application produced on the press, POS displays, was shown to the students. Mr Neave said: ‘This press is suitable for high volume production work, typically used by department stores. A unique feature of this machine is the ability to print three A4 pages together on one sheet. As a digital printer, it allows our customers to change the designs instantly and gives them the chance to make each one different with variable data.’

More than 3000 students registered for the PrintIT! Awards this year and during its nine years over 140,000 have passed through the scheme. With such an encouraging number of young people learning more about the printing industry, new recruits are sure to be more informed than ever before.