McGrath Printing in Crystal Lake receives Graphics Excellence Awards

The Great Lakes Graphics Association announced that McGrath Printing and Custom Apparel of Crystal Lake recently received three Graphics Excellence Awards.

McGrath’s Follow the Action gift set received the highest honor – the Gutenberg Best of Category for Special Innovation Awards in Printing – an award of excellence for cartons and containers and a certificate of merit for specialty printing.

The competition is one of the largest regional printing competitions in the nation.

In addition to the three awards, McGrath Printing received the People’s Choice Award during a dinner May 23 in Addison.

McGrath’s Follow the Action gift set features unique designs of hunting and fishing on quality shirts and coffee mugs, all packaged in a die-cut box with matching graphics throughout to give it a 3D look.

A panel of out-of-state judges with extensive experience in printing and print production was brought in to examine the work. Each entry was judged on its own merit in a category with similar printed pieces.

The judging criteria included registration; crossovers; clarity and neatness; sharpness of halftones and line drawings; richness and tonal qualities of color; paper and ink selection; ink coverage; difficulty of printing; effective contrast or softness; finishing; bindery; and overall visual impact.

McGrath Printing founder and President Kevin McGrath added decorated apparel in 2007.

“We leveraged our expertise in printing with decorated apparel to better provide our clients a turnkey solution for their branding and corporate identity needs,” McGrath said in a news release.

“Follow the Action product lines evolved from my passion for fishing,” he said. “Designing the art for the apparel and creating the packaging to complement the entire gift set was fulfilling. We had to invest in patents and copyrights. By blending the two service lines, this continues to be a good decision for our clients.

“Today, our team is honored to receive these industry awards for innovation, craftsmanship and quality.”

McGrath Printing was founded in 1981 and launched the Follow the Action outdoors product lines in 2015.

This is McGrath Printing’s first submission to the Great Lakes Graphics Association’s awards program.

More than 700 entries were received from 71 different companies.