The Riso Rundown
By: Akira B.
Riso printing, or Risograph printing, has the similarities of screen printing with the advantage of affordability and a wide range of vibrant ink color variations. Dating back to the 80s, it’s far from a new form of art, but it has both regained its popularity, with examples from comics like Punk Rock Karaoke, while also being a staple of zine and art communities.
Every art form is a puzzle being pieced together to create something new and riso printing is no different. You have to take into consideration the layers you’re working with, the limited amount of colors you’ll be using, and how you set up your files for print. This pushes experimentation and embraces the unexpected and unique outcomes that come with the medium. We think it's important to spotlight creatives and professionals with this experience. So, we are chatting with Fend Hamilton; illustrator, comic maker, and printing specialist over at WonderPress Printing, to learn about their insight in the medium and even receive some helpful tips on prepping risograph files for print.
How would you describe riso printing from your creative perspective as someone who is a multifaceted artist in the traditional and digital space?
My painting and drawing professors would be so mad, I don’t really do anything traditionally these days. But, that doesn’t mean I am satisfied with the digital space. I love traditional mediums and making -real- objects, I just use printing as an extension of that. Normal digital printing is made with either inkjet or toner (some exceptions but stay with me here). We use toner at WonderPress which is microplastics (yumyum) sent through high heat to melt on the sheet. Why even on uncoated paper your prints will have a slight gloss to them (neat, huh?) but it relies almost exclusively on the paper to bring the wow factor. With Risography you can SEE the imperfections and the skill it takes to print, it feels more like traditional print making or silk screening. It is a digital machine with the feel of a traditional media. Even when customers don’t know what riso is they tend to be drawn to the Riso prints over the toner-based prints. Subconsciously drawn to the more premium and handmade looking pieces.
What were some influences that drew you to riso art?
I’ve been a fan of print media since I can remember. The textures, the forms, the page turn, how artists can use these simple materials to create a world or emotion. It had such an impact on me. From being a kid flipping through phone books to find the “your brain on drugs” ads because they had a specific visual cue (and eggs), to being a young teen eagerly flipping through magazines at the tanning salon waiting on my mom and trying to find every ad with a “tip-in” (a piece printed offline from the glossy magazine pages on a different stock and tipped into the proper spot in-line with an inserter) and reveling in the textural differences, this is all really long winded ways to say: I LOVE PRINT. When I went to SPX in 2010, I think? I found zines and mini-comics printed with vibrant colors and misregistration that I fell in love with. I ended up with more riso printed books from that show than anything else and I started researching the machine as soon as I got home.
Working at WonderPress, what’s the color picking process for riso printing? Are there certain colors that you’re allowed to use when printing?
[WonderPress] debated a lot when we were picking what colors to order. We wanted to keep our drums purely one color (as much as experimenting with swapping around would be cool, we wanted the next job to be just as clean as the last, so we had to cut the experimenting for now). Our lease had 8 drums, so we had to pick 8 colors out of the 71 they have that had the most bang for their buck. We wanted to offer up to 4 color printing and wanted to have at least a set of CMYK adjacent colors that were not just CMYK (we have better printers for that after all) so we chose indigo as our black stand-in, sky blue as our cyan, sunflower as yellow, and both fluorescent pink and crimson as our magenta. The other colors we ordered were fluorescent orange, emerald green, and orchid just to expand the gamut. Every shop will have their own color palette, best to check with your chosen shop to find out what they have before you make any art to print with them. Not everyone has the same colors (and honestly most don’t! It is really impressive how varied the offerings are out there!)
When working with riso printing, do you have to account for size? Is there a set standard for printing?
The masters can only print up to 11x17-ish without bleed. If you want the art to center or bleed perfectly you should plan it [the print] to be at least 10.5x16.5 to account for crop marks and registration. The smaller the print/the more copies you can gang up on one 11x17 master, the cheaper the individual pieces will be. An 8.5x11 booklet is a 11x17 spread, while a 8.5x5.5 booklet is technically 2-up, but that would mean a bustcut with no bleed, so, I’d still go a little smaller to account for the bleed/crops for cleaner registration, but, you get the idea, that will be 2 prints vs 1 per every sheet.
Are there similarities between preparing comic pages for print vs preparing risograph art for print?
I’d say prepping a riso print is the opposite of making comics. With comics you can start where you feel comfortable and end with a professional looking piece. You can start with a sketch, go right to inking, stop with the sketch, heck, you can probably letter the whole thing first and work backwards, you coward, do it! But with a riso print you want to follow a specific process. You want to talk to the printer you plan to use and ask if they need anything specific (or reference their site and make sure you know what they offer and what they need), then prep your art with their colors in mind. Then you want to separate the art into those colors in black and white/greyscale.
Before we talk about that specific riso process, what advice can you give first time riso artists in an effort to avoid some easy mistakes when preparing for print?
Don’t make it complicated. Try a two color print first to see what your style looks like in riso. You can always go big later, you want to make sure what you think it will look like will be what it turns into. This will take a lot of guesswork out of the bigger projects later, you will know what to expect and that your process is sound.
A lot of riso printing is experimentation and trying out what works best for you. And while you’re having your fun and trying out new ways to express your creativity, attached below is another Curiosity Catch Sheet in order to help you prepare those files for your artistic risograph journey.
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See you in the stars.
- Akira B.