Schlagwort: risoprinting

A Look on Risography and Sustainability

Sustainability is a persisting concern of today, and some consider risography to be relatively eco-friendly printing method. Why is that?

Low Energy Consumption

Risography has low energy consumption. Unlike traditional digital or offset printing, which often require high heat or extensive processing, riso printers use a stencil-based method that consumes minimal electricity. This makes it a more energy-efficient alternative for producing prints, zines, and posters.

Soy-Based Inks

Riso printers use soy-based inks, which are much more environmentally friendly compared to petroleum-based inks used in other printing techniques. Soy ink is biodegradable and produces fewer harmful emissions, reducing its environmental impact. It also doesn’t require toner or fusing agents, which further minimizes chemical waste.

Minimal Waste

It is designed for duplicating large batches with minimal material waste. The master stencils used in risograph printing are made of rice paper, which is more biodegradable than plastic-based alternatives. Riso also doen’t use plates or screens, cutting down on excess materials. I have also heard that masters are made of banana peel – this seems to be untrue and the master is in fact rice-based.

Recyclable and Uncoated Paper

Risograph printing works best with uncoated, recycled, or FSC-certified paper. Unlike digital printing, which often relies on glossy or coated paper that is difficult to recycle, risography thrives on rough, natural-textured paper, making it an ideal choice for eco-conscious designers. Many risograph studios prioritize the use of responsibly sourced paper, which further reduces the environmental footprint.

Encourages Small Batch Printing

By it’s nature, it encourages small-batch, on-demand printing. It allows for efficient production runs, ensuring that materials are used responsibly. This is particularly valuable for independent artists, zine makers, and small publishers who want to minimize waste while maintaining high-quality prints. In commercial printeries, small clients, the ones that don’t want a thousands copies printed, are frowned upon. Of course, they don’t generate any real income for the business. But this leads to problems that I have encountered many times as a student needing a preview print of small university project. Problems like being ignored or being received rudely. When I was a baby designer and had no clue about anything, I had a shop tell me on the phone I should come at 7 in the morning, and I did, and then they let me wait until 9, because that’s when the graphic comes to work, and then he arrived and he let me wait another half an hour while he had his coffee, and then he priority took in some other client who just arrived. A short story for you on the side, to appreciate wie cool it is, that being a small client is no issue for riso printers.

A More Sustainable Alternative to Screen Printing

Screen printing is another popular method for independent printmakers, BUT it requires rather extensive setup, chemical emulsions, and water usage. Risography, on the other hand, eliminates the need for these resources while still producing bold, layered prints with rich textures and vibrant colors. It is basically automated screenprinting.

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:

Riso Printing Photos 02

I had another opportunity to do some risoprinting, when I joined Lucia for her workshop she holds with her students every year. Because this wasn’t one of my private printing sessions, I didn’t have time to tweak and adjust on spot depending on results, so I went with whatever I prepared and observed the problems that arose.

I selected 3 of my old photos, of which I thought they might look cool risoprinted with the blue and pink riso inks at FH, and one illustration in 2 colors, of which I don’t have layers separated, so I applied color separation method to it too.

The photos are rather monochromatic, so I expected trouble when color separation. I also struggled to find a good profile to apply here. Just as previously when I needed black+fluo orange profile, and there was none, there was none for medium blue+fluo pink. I substituted it with teal+fluo pink one.

It still required much color tweaking and in the end I think the prints would be best just monochromatic, but this was color separation experiment, and things have been learned from it. Specifically, things about our FH risograph. I had my suspicions before from previous project printed there I wrote about in another blog post, and this session confirmed my suspicions.

The little risograph we have hardly differentiates between 100% to about 80% opacity. The photos, while clearly with a variety of grayscale levels, came too dark.

Lucia, however, does something I didn’t really try much before, and perhaps it would be interesting to see, it it works the same. Why I mostly print straight from computer, she utilizes the risograph scanner. Next time I will test this.

Back to the prints and colors. One photograph turned out great. One okay-ish. One terrible. The illustation is boring. The one good photograph I have also tried in black and fluo pink, because it seemed to me it might be a nice fit for it.

The preparation of layers was even less clean process than my previous photo printing, because of previously mentioned monochromatic nature of the pictures.