by julia.steinle -

Risography in the Art & ComDes Scene

There’s been a resurgence in Riso over the past few years, with a new wave of printmakers relying on a trusty Risograph to bring their illustrations to life.

The relevancy for communication design includes publishing magazines, illustrations, patterns, making limited editions, and introducing the general public to the wonders of this accessible technique. 

My Featured Artists

While Risography has gained popularity among artists, it is generally used as a medium rather than a defining aspect of an artist’s fame. Many contemporary illustrators and designers leverage Risography to create distinct works, but they are often celebrated for their broader artistic style rather than the technique alone. Here are a few notable artists and studios associated with Risography:

Kevin Garrison

Using the power of Risograph printing to self publish a poster series using design for good. Copy points are from the CDC.gov website at the time of publishing. All of these precautions were necessary in the beginning of the outbreaks before the public knew how the corona virus was transmitted. Subsequent variants caused additional confusion and vaccine resistance by certain groups further compounded the herd immunity goals of the CDC. These posters were “Wild postings” in Kansas City, Missouri during the initial phases of the COVID-19 global pandemic. 

Joe Maccarone

Joe Maccarone is an illustrator living and working in Pittsburgh, with a BFA in illustration from Maryland Institute College of Art. He’s really into slime, ooze, and goo, and would like to live on top of a mountain one day. He currently draws green owls at Duolingo. He’s collaborated with The New York Times, The New Yorker, VICE, Buck, and Bleacher Report.

This zine is risograph printed in green, blue, and fluorescent orange in collaboration with Colour Code in Toronto.

Becky Mann

Becky is a freelance illustrator based in Leeds. She uses overlapping colours and shapes in her illustrations, often in the style of risograph. Becky’s influences include favourite foods and meals, animals and nature, music and film.

Conclusion

Concluding this research, it became evident that Risography is not widely utilized in contemporary marketing or communication strategies by major brands as part of their branding efforts. Instead, it remains predominantly within the realm of illustrators and artistic communities, where it is celebrated for its unique aesthetic and used primarily to create limited edition prints, posters, and zines.

Risography has become a creative tool in communication design, offering a unique aesthetic that combines bold colors, texture, and the imperfections of manual printing. This makes it particularly appealing for projects where originality, artistic expression, and tactile qualities are valued. But it remains to be a niche.

More Inspiration

Wild Press in Glasgow https://www.instagram.com/wild__press/

Naomi Wilkinson
https://www.naomiwilkinson.co.uk/

Duplikat • Risograph Studio https://www.instagram.com/duplikatpress/?hl=en

Resources

by julia.steinle -

Riso Printing / Tec specs

A Japanese printing process, similar to screen printing. Riso is never perfect, which is precisely what makes it so exciting, as colour applications and offsets are special characteristics. There is one print pass per colour. The colours are therefore not mixed, but applied in layers.

This also means stencils are designed especially for each drum and cannot be used on another drum. Multicolored prints are produced by switching out the drums, overprinting, and again running the paper through the RISO! 

Colors

Riso colours are applied to the paper one after the other, similar to screen printing. Each colour is printed separately. Riso inks appear translucent in the overprint and this transparent effect can be used to create mixed colours. The advantage compared to CMYK printers is that special colors like neon or metallic can be printed.

Our FabLab has an assortment of four colors. Black, blue, fluo orange and fluo pink. These colors can be used in the following shades and can be blended to make new colors by layering and altering % of opacity.

To prepare your artwork for printing, you need to save each color layer as a separate grayscale file. All solid shapes, type and images should be set to Black (from 5% to 100% opacity). Fonts cannot be smaller than 7pt and lines .5pt minimum.

Color Seperation

In addition to solid colour areas, it is also possible to print halftone screens on the Risograph. If multi-coloured images are to be reproduced, similar to offset or digital printing, this can be done in various ways. These colour layers are usually called separations, positives or plates, depending on the printing process, substrate or context. For example, it is possible to create a three-colour print with three colours in the Risograph, provided that three masters are created and printed one after the other on the same substrate.

If image areas are overprinted in two or more image areas, new colours are created as the colours on the risograph are translucent and mix where they overlap with others. These colour separations are to be regarded as greyscale images, which can have a respective colour application between 0 and 100 %. An area of an image coloured in full tone therefore has 100% of the respective colour, whereas lighter areas of the image also have lighter colour tones. It should be pointed out once again that the Risograph does not have the colours of the four-colour Euroscale, cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Once the image has been converted into the multicolour profile, it is divided into the channels. This can be done in Adobe Photoshop in the [Channels] window. The [Channels] window is a list-like overview of the channels contained in the image file and can be found in the top programme bar under Window > Channels. On the right-hand side of this window is a button for activating a drop-down menu. Here, the [Split channels] command splits the image into the respective number of primary colour channels.

Paper

It’s important to use open pored paper, as the ink will be soaking into the paper better. 60lb-100lb – 80lb Preferred and Uncoated paper – Vellum or “Offset” finish preferred, because Riso can’t print glossi or coated paper.

For this reason I bougth different paper types and colors and tried them out in our FabLab. Here is a sneak peek into the results:

Resources