Leading industry names sponsor the annual greeting card awards
Time to get a move on if you want to enter the Henries Awards 2023 as the closing date is looming fast – it’s this Sunday, 18 June!
To give yourself a chance of standing on that podium at the Mardi Gras-themed 5 October awards ceremony, you need to head over to www.thehenriesawards.co.uk to ensure all the loveliness of the greeting cards launched in the past year are entered.
It’s completely free to take part, you just have to make sure the product was launched between 8 June 2022, and 15 June 2023, and your cards will go through to the first of the two-stage judging process.
That takes place entirely online through the awards website, thanks to an extensive panel of retail buyers who will be invited to judge at least six categories each.
Then, from the judges’ online votes, a shortlist of contenders will be drawn up to go forward to the live round, again judged entirely by retailers, where publishers will be asked to supply physical card samples to be presented to the panel whose votes decide the finalists and winner in all product categories.
The Henries 2023 has again garnered the backing and support of great industry sponsors, including Alpha Colour Printers, Antalis, Card Factory, Cardgains, EBB Paper, Fedrigoni Paper, G.F Smith, Gould Paper Sales UK, Graphite Creative, Herbert Walkers, Loxleys, LB Warehousing, Postmark, Scribbler/FujiFilm, Skeet Print, Skylight Media, Spring & Autumn Fair, The Imaging Centre, The Sherwood Group, UK Envelope Centre, and Windles Group.
The Henries 2023 award categories span the whole gamut of greeting card publishing, from humour to cute, art to children’s, Christmas to sentiment, and D&I to R&O. This year the Best Handmade Or Hand-finished Range has been expanded to reflect the proliferation of paper-engineered cards and has been renamed Best 3D, Pop-Up, Hand-Finished Or Handmade Range.
Submissions should be for card ranges that have been launched at retail between 8 June, 2022, and 15 June, 2023, or for new designs to an existing range launched within that period. Entries for the Best Spring Seasons Range category should be event-specific, ie publishers should submit a separate entry for Valentine’s Day, a separate entry for Mother’s Day, etc.
Once again this year, there is no online submission stage for The Lynn Tait Most Promising Young Designer Or Artist award as it has been deemed this special award category needs to be appreciated in the flesh so creatives are invited to submit boards showcasing their artistic prowess. This award is open to all designers and artists, either employed by a publisher or freelance, aged 35 years or under on 1 July, 2023.
While all product entries have to be in by Sunday, 18 June, there’s a little longer for The Lynn Tait Most Promising Young Designer Or Artist with the absolute deadline for this category alone being Wednesday, 26 July, 2023. Boards need to be sent to Jakki Brown, The Henries Young Designer, Max Publishing, United House, North Road, London, N7 9DP.
The awards ceremony will be taking place at The Royal Lancaster Hotel in London on Thursday, 5 October, 2023, and The Henries 2023 is set to be a vibrant, joyful event, especially as it will take on an up-tempo Mardi Gras fiesta theme this year! To book tickets click here.
