A total of 12 teams from across the continent and as far afield as Panama took part. 

The Opinry team – Julie Dumoulin, Ian Jakubek, Henry Leyman, Merke Luuk, Dries Maerten, Frederic Vandelanotte and Brian Caron – was awarded first prize for their idea to take the guesswork out of packaging design decisions by combining AI and human opinions to avoid expensive brand errors.

Jury members praised Opinry for their strong team spirit and great pitch, and said the well-formed idea looked like “a great solution for brand owners”.

Panamanian online printer Imprimu gained second place for its Shiprz idea to offer brands a lower cost of customers acquisition, and e-commerce customers free shipping, by using space on shipping labels for transpromo messages and offers.

A team from Esko won third prize for their ScanTheProfile idea, a cloud-based service to allow carton converters and label printers to make a spectral scan of a printed sample that has an unknown colour profile, and using the cloud-based tool to extract the colour profile data for the job. 

The Hackathon prizes were sponsored by Sappi, with first place receiving €2,000 and three months’ mentorship from Sappi, second place receiving €1,000, and both second and third places receiving two months’ mentorship from the VIGC. All winners will receive exposure for their ideas via Inkish.tv and at the upcoming Het Congres. 

The Hackathon was organised by VIGC, the independent knowledge centre for graphic communications in the Benelux; Het Congres, the annual event for graphic professionals in Belgium and the Netherlands, and professional services group EY. 

Printweek contributing editor Jo Francis was one of the jury members.

VIGC managing director Jos Steutelings said he hoped to expand the event’s reach and that teams from the UK would engage with next year’s event.