Behind Premier Press’s Award-Winning Printing Is a Story About Partnership

Every award-winning printing project starts the same way. A client pitches an idea, and a team figures out how to build it. But, the in between rarely makes it into the final presentation. Nobody sees the prototypes that were scrapped, the material tests that didn’t hold up, or the late-stage adjustments that saved a project from falling apart during shipping. What people see is the finished piece.

This year, all that invisible work added up to something worth pausing on. Premier Press earned 16 Print Excellence Awards, more than any other company, across a 13-state competition spanning the western United States. The wins touch nearly every corner of what Premier does: structural packaging, commercial print, branded merchandise, and direct mail.

It Starts with a Problem to Solve

A trophy was never in the brief.

Teton Ridge needed packaging worthy of a premium whiskey brand, something that felt as considered as what was inside the box. Not Your Mother’s needed structural engineering that could hold up to both design ambition and the realities of shipping. The University of Portland needed a President’s Report that reflected the institution’s standing without feeling stiff or overproduced. None of these clients set out to win an award. They set out to solve a specific brand challenge, and the recognition followed as a natural result of doing that work well.

That’s the standard behind every project at Premier, award-worthy or not. Printing that works as hard as the brand behind it needs to.

Built to Hold Up Under Pressure

Packaging that wins awards has to do more than look good in a photo. It has to survive the entire journey between concept and customer: shipping, handling, unboxing, and the split-second first impression. That’s the space the packaging team lives in, whether the project calls for luxury and influencer packaging built with materials like acrylics, wood, metal, foil, mylar, and fine papers, or premium folding cartons designed for the retail shelf.

That was the challenge behind Teton Ridge’s whiskey packaging, a project that earned recognition specifically for taking on something that seemed nearly impossible to execute at scale. It’s also what drove the structural engineering behind Not Your Mother’s haircare packaging, where creativity had to be balanced against real-world durability requirements, shipping constraints, and production timelines that didn’t leave much room for trial and error.

In-house 3D engineering and detailed renderings are what turn an ambitious concept into something that can ship. Bold concepting is one part of the equation. Figuring out how to manufacture it reliably, at volume, without sacrificing design intent, is the harder part. It’s easier to get right when design, production, and finishing all stay under one roof instead of getting passed between vendors. Award-winning printing doesn’t happen by accident.

Print That Tells the Whole Story

Commercial print might be the most visible thread running through this year’s wins, but it’s also the category where craftsmanship is easiest to overlook. A well-executed catalog or brochure can look effortless, which is exactly the point. The effort is supposed to disappear into the final product.

The ZT Catalog and the University of Portland’s President’s Report both earned recognition for disciplined execution. It’s the kind of result that comes from G7-certified offset presses delivering precise, consistent color across every substrate, paired with finishing work like foil stamping, embossing, and die-cutting that make a piece feel as premium as it looks. This is commercial print solutions territory in its truest form: the craft behind the page, not just ink on paper.

The Kyle Bunting lookbook took that same philosophy even further, using a dual-sided, flip-format structure to give two distinct product collections their own space within a single unified piece. A gatefold center spread allowed the full color range of both collections live in one expansive view. This couldn’t have happened without production and design working in lockstep from the earliest stages of the project.

Creative and production are treated as one continuous process instead of two separate handoffs, which is why these commercial print pieces hold up to close inspection instead of just looking good from a distance.

Beyond the Page

Recognition this year didn’t stop on the page. Branded merchandise and apparel decoration capabilities earned their own share of the spotlight, proving that award-winning printing translates well beyond paper and packaging.

The Fortnite streetwear jacket showcased advanced embroidery and dye sublimation work, techniques that demand precision most people never think to look for in apparel. The Crocs + Xbox collaboration kit brought that same attention to detail into branded merchandise, with sustainability considerations built directly into the production process rather than added as an afterthought.

These wins show that capabilities aren’t siloed by product category. Screen printing, embroidery, and heat transfer decoration all happen in-house, which keeps color, detail, and turnaround steady no matter how complex the run. The same problem-solving instinct that goes into engineering a whiskey box also goes into decorating a jacket or assembling a merchandise kit. It’s one team, applying one standard, across a much wider range of deliverables than most partners can offer.

Awards We Won

Sixteen wins, spanning packaging, print, apparel, and design. Here’s the full list, organized by category.

Specialty & Best of Category

• Best of Oregon – ZT Catalog
• Best Structural Engineering – Not Your Mother’s Haircare
• Best Product Catalog – ZT Catalog
• They Said It Couldn’t Be Done – Teton Ridge Whiskey Box
• Best Self Promotion – Premier Holiday Candy Box
• Best Folding – University of Portland President’s Report
• People’s Choice – Teton Ridge Whiskey Box

Awards of Excellence

• Boyd Brochure
• He Gets Us Brochure Series
• Kyle Bunting Catalog
• Fortnite Streetwear Jacket (Embroidery)
• Crocs + Xbox Collaboration Kit (Environmentally Sound)

Certificates of Merit

• Not Your Mother’s Haircare Promotional Campaign
• University of Portland President’s Report
• Fortnite Streetwear Jacket (Dye Sublimation)
• Student-Designed Wrapping Paper Campaign

One Partner, Every Capability

What ties these wins together isn’t a single category, technique, or client. It’s that one team, working under one roof, can move a project from “what if” through structural engineering, commercial print solutions, apparel decoration, and fulfillment without ever handing it off to an outside vendor.

The Crocs + Xbox collaboration kit is a clean example of what that looks like in practice. The project needed structural packaging engineered for both durability and sustainability, work recognized with an Award of Excellence for environmentally sound design. It also had to house two major brand identities in a single kit, giving each equal presence.

Handled by separate vendors, that’s two handoffs, two timelines, and two sets of revisions to coordinate. Handled by one team, it’s a single project moving through packaging, decoration, and fulfillment without ever leaving the building. Decisions happen faster and the final product stays closer to the original vision.
The capability range is what makes it possible to take on the kinds of ideas other partners turn down. A client doesn’t need to coordinate between a packaging engineer, a print production house, and a separate merchandise supplier. They bring the idea to one team, and that team figures out how to build it, test it, and deliver it, start to finish. It’s a big part of what makes award-winning printing repeatable.

Investing in the Next Generation of Design

Not every award-winning project starts with a client. Premier’s holiday wrapping paper is now in its fourth year as a student design competition, open to graphic design programs across the country. Students submit their most festive concepts, and Premier’s team selects a handful of winning designs to print and hand out to clients, friends, and the extended Premier family each December.

This year’s collection drew submissions from design programs nationwide, with four winning pieces selected from a deep pool of talent. The pieces are produced with the same offset printing and finishing care that goes into any commercial print solutions project, and mailed directly to clients and partners.

Fifteen thousand sheets are printed and given away each year. It’s a different kind of production run than a packaging system or lookbook, but it says just as much about where craftsmanship begins.

The Real Win

Sixteen awards makes a catchy headline. But if you ask anyone on the team what actually mattered this year, the answer won’t be the trophy count. It’ll be the clients who trusted us with an ambitious, unproven idea, and the people across creative, engineering, prepress, production, and fulfillment who figured out how to make that idea real.

That’s the story behind every one of these 16 wins. Not a single standout project, but a consistent pattern of partnership, problem-solving, and craftsmanship applied across an unusually wide range of work.

These 16 wins carry the fingerprints of dozens of people, client-side and Premier-side alike, who treated an unproven idea seriously enough to see it through. Collaboration is the actual asset here. The awards are just the evidence.