Text by: Kateřina Misiarzová, Ondřej Prokop
With the beginning of the new year, the professional competition of polygraphers and printers called DUPLEX, which is organized annually by Albrecht High School, has “taken off”.
The aim of this competition is to connect both disciplines and to find a suitable format, which has not been introduced in the Czech Republic so far. For young polygraphers and printers, it is an interesting challenge, where they can use everything they have learned so far in their studies to complete a specific task. FINIDR has been the general partner of this competition since the beginning.
This year’s edition is influenced in a positive sense by two important events. Firstly, our printing house FINIDR celebrates 30 years since its foundation, and at the same time this year marks the 195th anniversary of the birth of Karl (II) Albin Prochaska. He is the person under whose leadership the Prochaska factory achieved its greatest growth and became known not only within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but throughout Europe.
It was therefore symbolic that we decided to incorporate these milestones into this year’s competition of printers and polygraphers in cooperation with the Albrecht High School and the Museum of Těšín. This year’s theme is entitled Following the traces of printing in Těšín from Prochaska to FINIDR.
The DUPLEX competition is attended by 2nd year students of the Printing (poster printing), 2nd year of the Polygraphy (photography competition) and 3rd year of the Polygraphy (graphic competition – Pexeso editing), with the competition block consisting of four categories – Photography, Pexeso, Printing and Polygraphic Triathlon.
Students across the disciplines collaborate with each other in DUPLEX. Polygraphy students are taking photographs. They make the pictures, process them and hand over to the graphic designers who are working in two-person creative teams who make the typesetting of the Pexeso, and it is these images that they use. The printers then have to print a historical poster from the photographs. The triathlon is then a skills competition across all grades. Counting sheets, folding folders and determining the paper weight. It’s all about time and quality.
All works must correspond with this year’s theme. Students can draw inspiration for photos and images for the Pexeso not only from the historic FINIDR B building, the Museum of Teschen, FINIDR A, other historical sources, but in fact anything their creativity and possibilities allow.
In the first phase of the competition, we took the students through our premises to get an idea of what they could photograph. The second phase was the photo shoot itself. The students were interested not only in the details of the machines, but also in the premises of both areas of our printing plant or other interesting places in Těšín connected with printing.
The closing ceremony and announcement of the competition is planned for mid-May 2024.
We wish the students good luck and look forward to seeing their final creations!
