Printa Shop

Located on Rumbach Sebestyén utca 10, Printa Akadémia is an exciting

multifunctional space. The front door opens into a cozy free wi-fi café
serving very good and delightfull coffee, tea and snacks , next to the café
is an intimate gallery showcasing works by Hungarian and
international designers and artists.

Owners and opertors Zita Majoros and Claudia Martins are well respected
in the cultural life of Budapest. Majoros is a graphic designer and the
owner of Boltmuhely, a designshop dedicated to Hungarian designers.
Martins is a professional photographerand a printmaker aswell. Both of
their interest lays environmentally conscious design and their goal is to
foster a community of artist and appreciators.

Entering further in Printa Universe you will find silscreenmaschines and

high-quality printers, in this bustling workshop, the space is available for
interested artists to rent for work. The space is also used for clases
workshops and lectures. The mission of Printa Akadémia as they like to
call it in the shop, is to share knowledge on printing techniques, print art,
and eco-design, together with professionals and artist.
Graphic Design Vs. Art

When we entered the Printa shop, it was not only a shop, to the left a
small gallery space was installed. This is something you see more and
more when entering a graphic design shop selling clothes. Why has the
gallery as function and space made its way into a clothes shop? The
answer must be the global understanding of art these days. Everybody can
be an artist and even with the smallest tools such as mobile phones etc is
all tools that you can use for art in your own name. The artist is no longer
an interpretater of the physical and metaphorical which is not allowed for
the public person. No the artist exist in every layers today and there are
more and more artist around us today than ever before. The chance of
hitting an artist if you throw a ball out of the window in Berlin is 9-10.
Art is trendy, very trendy, it is very trendy and cool to become an artist,
to be an artist is a symbol of individualism, and to be individual is a very
strong sign in our society. An artist is no longer a person sitting on his
loft with a candlelight thinking about the higher connection between
nature and god and how to interpretate these emosions into a form. No,
todays artist are mostly in the 30es, and they are found in every layers of
society and in comercial business aswell. Art has become a capitalistic
way of making money and with the boom in the first 10 years of the
millenium art is a strong business lead by curators and galleries. But lets
turn back to the printa shop gallery, here we saw an exhibition of mixed
graphic design framed and presented as art. We all watched it closely and
when we came back to our hotel we began our discussion. Is graphic
Design art? We all agreed, NO. Graphic Design is not art and it doesnt
belong in a gallery as a piece of art, it is frustrating to see such drawings
layouts with no individuality all based on the trend of time. No nerve, no
sincerness, nothing just a loose idea which might aswell could have been
a comercial, instead its presented behind glass. Graphic design is not
made in a room a free thoughts, graphic design has recipient and it has a
purpose. It needs to signal something that attracts our vision and make us
buy a certain product. But isn´t art a product? Yes it is, but the artist is
sitting alone with the choices and its descisions. The artist is the free
creator.
Silkscreenprinting is a printing technique that uses a wowen method to
support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of
mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed
through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or a
squegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past
the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.
Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design
is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated
with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto
the printing surface. This is refered to the above mentioned.

Printing Techniques
A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric called mesh
stretched over a frame of aluminium or wood. Originally human hair then
silk was woven into screen mesh; currently most mesh is made of man-
made materials such as steel, nylon and plolyester. Areas of the screen are
blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil, which is a
negative of the image to be printed; that is, the open spaces are where the
ink will appear.
The screen is placed atop a substrate such as paper or fabric. Ink is placed
on top of the screen, and a fill bar (also known as a floodbar) is used to
fill the mesh openings with ink. The operator begins with the fill bar at
the rear of the screen and behind a reservoir of ink. The operator lifts the
screen to prevent contact with the substrate and then using a slight
amount of downward force pulls the fill bar to the front of the screen.
This effectively fills the mesh openings with ink and moves the ink
reservoir to the front of the screen. The operator then uses a sponge
(rubber blade) to move the mesh down to the substrate and pushes the
squeegee to the rear of the screen. The ink that is in the mesh opening is
pumped or squeezed by capillary action to the substrate in a controlled
and prescribed amount, i.e. the wet ink deposit is proportional to the
thickness of the mesh and or stencil. As the squeegee moves toward the
rear of the screen the tension of the mesh pulls the mesh up away from
the substrate (called snap-off) leaving the ink upon the substrate surface.
There are three common types of screenprinting presses. The 'flat-bed',
'cylinder', and the most widely used type, the 'rotary'.
Textile items printed with multi-colour designs often use a wet on wet
technique, or colors dried while on the press, while graphic items are
allowed to dry between colours that are then printed with another screen
and often in a different color after the product is re-aligned on the press.
The screen can be re-used after cleaning. However if the design is no
longer needed, then the screen can be "reclaimed"; that is, cleared of all
emulsion and used again. The reclaiming process involves removing the
ink from the screen then spraying on a stencil remover. Stencil removers
come in the form of liquids, gels, or powders. The powdered types have
to be mixed with water before use, and so can be considered to belong to
the liquid category. After applying the stencil remover, the emulsion must
be washed out using a pressure washer.
Most screens are ready for recoating at this stage, but sometimes screens
will have to undergo a further step in the reclaiming process called
dehazing. This additional step removes haze or "ghost images" left
behind in the screen once the emulsion has been removed. Ghost images
tend to faintly outline the open areas of previous stencils, hence the name.
They are the result of ink residue trapped in the mesh, often in the
knuckles of the mesh (the points where threads cross).
While the public thinks of garments in conjunction with screenprinting,
the technique is used on tens of thousands of items, including decals,
clock and watch faces, balloons, and many other products. The technique
has even been adapted for more advanced uses, such as laying down
conductors and resistors in multi-layer circuits using thin ceramic layers
as the substrate.