The Books
So, what books are there on risography? Generally, the know-how of this printing method is widely scattered across the internet, but I was interested to see what has been printed. Because books tend to put all the nice info together in one place.
I discovered 4 that I could get.
- Risomania – The New Spirit of Printing
I got my hands of the 3rd edition from 2021. Risomania starts of with discussing a past, present and future of stencil duplicating processes. Risograph is a stencil duplicator machine. It talks about its origins, its cousin the mimeograph, and how it all came to be. Then it talks about how it entered the arts and design context. And its most extensive part focuses on the state of the art today, and gives a comprehensive overview of applications of riso printing by todays artists and designers. Most of the risography books focus on that – they serve as a collection to look through.
- Risography – Loving Imperfections
This book from 2017 is bilingual (English/Spanish) and it is a comprehensive collection of some of the best known riso artists and studios of today. It helped to identify some of the riso art I have stumbled upon, but didn’t have the information about it. From the artist represented there, I particularly liked Jacqueline Colley’s work. She is a pattern designer and illustator with background in fashion, and her work translated through risograph is rather charming.
- Riso Art – A Creative’s Guide to Mastering Risography
Published in 2023, this book is about the only practical guideline for riso printing out there. It shortly covers the history of risograph and then proceeds to explain it’s workings and provides few useful tips and tricks. The rest of the book is dedicated to a gallery of works by various riso studios around the world, but this time with a twist – each is accompanied by a short interview with the people involved, which provides a nice insight into the world of risography.
- No Magic in Riso
I so far don’t own this book, as it is on the more expensive side, at about 55 euro for a copy. I have, however, seen it in person. It’s small. It is so small. I mean, I should not have been so surprised, because this one is actually printed on risograph, and that is rather format limited. But it looks so majestic in all the product photos I’ve seen! it was first published in 2019.
It also greatly differs from the rest content-wise. Here, look for yourselves: https://odotoo.com/NO-MAGIC-IN-RISO
This book is a color separation study. It provides a comprehensive overview of methods to approach the color separation process in risography, and comes with a hefty bundle of color charts, that demonstrate quite impressively what can be achieved with riso inks.
A picture for your convenience:
