Santoro scoops prestigious LOUIE Award
For the second year running, UK card publisher, Santoro London, has triumphed at the US Greeting Card Association's prestigious LOUIE awards.
The awards were held on Sunday May 17 during the National Stationery Show in New York with a gala event recognising the excellence of cards in 56 categories. Entries are judged on a 10-point scale of criteria that includes imagination, impact, artistry, harmony, sendability and value.
Santoro's win came in the Blank (Above $3.50) category with a Baby Girl design (right) in the publisher's Swing Card range of 3D greetings.
The overall Card of the Year honors went to Papyrus for its Valentine’s Day card in the Above $3.50 category (right centre) and to Sunrise Greetings for its Birthday – General in the $3.50 & Below price category.
The evening also featured a Special Young Entrepreneur Award to reward the talent, creativity and enterprise of Ian Meier, a nine-year-old from New Jersey, who creates and sells handmade cards to a local coffee house. His sophisticated, elegant designs feature embellishments and dimensional layering with an artistic maturity well beyond his years. He received a standing ovation from the audience.
The 22nd Annual LOUIE Awards are for cards marketed and sold in the US throughout 2009. Nearly 900 entries from 146 international publishing companies were featured, including those based in Canada, England, India, Israel, and the US. Sally Anderson of Hallmark who chaired the awards programme explained the theme: "Just as athletes spend long hours training to compete as they strive for gold, our designers, writers and illustrators spend hours training to develop new and exciting products – greeting cards, invitations and imprintables – that companies hope will score gold with consumers each year. The LOUIEs are the gold awards for our industry.”
The LOUIEs are named after Louis Prang, the German lithographer credited with introducing color lithography to the U.S. card industry in 1861.
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