Young achievers award

A proposed new awards system to recognise the winning qualities in young professionals across our industry will not even mention the term – apprenticeship. Imagine a gala event held at one of our capital city’s lavish hotels with TV cameras and the press jostling as glamorous young things strut the stage to the acclaim of…

Are printers paying too much in wages?

Industry gadfly, James Cryer, bites back at the suggestion that high wages are a problem for the printing industry. In the current issue of Print21 magazine, Hagop Tchamkertenian, the industry’s sole full-time economist, claims the industry’s wages bill is too high. In his opinion the secret of how to make a buck in the printing…

The NSW PICA’s towards a fairer system

After Offset Alpine topped the award haul at last week’s NSW PICAs and won the gong for NSW Printer of the Year, James Cryer, long-time industry gadfly and founder of JDA Print Recruitment, shares his thoughts about how the awards should adapt to the modern era to become fairer for everyone. Comedienne Julia Morris held…

Safe to join the printing industry

Last week the doors opened a little wider to admit – and even welcome – a new breed to the printing industry. It may be too melodramatic to say that history was made, but nonetheless, it was an historic event. For the first time in the history of our industry, the existence of digital print…

Don’t demoralise the industry

With all the doom and gloom being spouted about the print industry at the moment, it can be easy to miss the plethora of positive and innovative developments spreading through the local industry as well. James Cryer (pictured), founder of JDA Print Recruitment and wellknown industry gadfly, writes that some of the industry’s biggest players…

If paper didn’t grow on trees

Paper is dammed annoying. If only you could dig the damn stuff out of the ground. Governments would actually encourage you to do it – as they do with coal or uranium. Or, if it came from the sea, you could fish for it quite happily to your heart’s content until you’d practically exhausted the…

LIA pulls a corker of a night

Who said printers were a bunch of beer-sodden, lager-louts? They may have been, but not any more. No more beer-stained shirtfronts or beery breath and no more beer-bellies. From now on we’re a bunch of latte-sipping, chardonnay-quaffing dilettantes, or so David Wells, President of LIA (NSW) would have us believe. David stopped at nothing to…

All the many glittering prizes

Alison Stieven-Taylor, in her comments about the recently held Printovations Awards, has correctly identified an issue, which tantalises and beguiles us at least once every year. Are there too many print awards? Well, it depends how you count them, but a quick roll-call of all the States’ PICA’s awards reveals an average of 40 different…