notsofastpress
is a micro risograph studio
located in sunny Porto
run by Tina Siuda
is a micro risograph studio
located in sunny Porto
run by Tina Siuda
︎
notsofastpress
@gmail.com
notsofastpress
@gmail.com
WHAT IS A RISOGRAPH?
Risograph is a duplicator machine that looks on the outside like a copy machine and works on the inside like a screenprinter - producing prints at high speed.
Each print is unique and special due to the textures and imperfections of the machine. The vivid colours are printed with soy or rice - oil based inks.
Due to the little environmental impact, affordability and hand-made feel of each Risoprint, creative community has adapted this technique to produce beautiful artworks, posters and publications.
RISO has it’s origins in post-war Japan and was invented by Noboru Hayama in 1946,
nowadays its headquartered in Tokyo, under the name Riso Kagaku Corporation.
The word “Riso” stands for “ideal” in Japanese.
The Risograph was originally designed for high-volume printing in institutions
such as schools, churches and local communities. It’s soy-based ink,
high efficiency and low production cost is perfect for production runs of
50 to 10000 copies of the same print in colour.
RISO works by transforming your black and white artwork in a paper stencil, which is called a master.
For each colour of your artwork, you need a new master, they are not reusable. Once you have chosen the colour/s for your artwork, you scan or upload your image in a file to the machine.
The chosen colour drum is inserted into the RISO and the paper stencil with your artwork is wrapped around it. Each drum is assigned to one specific colour. Once in the machine, the ink from the drum
is pressed out through the stencil onto the paper, while the drum is rotating at high speed.
Paper is fed flat through the RISO. The colour drum rotates inside, “kissing” each sheet of paper that passes under it, printing the image. Each print comes out slightly different, due to the ink coverage, texture of the drum, slight movement of paper while passing under the drum.
One colour is printed at a time, for each colour you need to switch the drum and pass the paper again through the machine. When printing a multicoloured artwork, you are repeating the process to compose your image.
The format we work with is A3!
The Riso printer doesn’t print with bleed, so you always need to keep a 10mm margin around your artwork.
Within the format of A3, you can fit 2 x A4, 4 x A5, 8 x A6 - always keeping in mind the 10mm margin.
The artwork should be flattened before exporting to PDF file, without transparencies or effects.
PDF file should be in greyscale, 300dpi and real size (A3)
Each colour of your design needs to be in a separate PDF file, named after your chosen colour.
We also ask for a JPG mock-up preview in colour, so that we can do our best at getting as close as possible to the desired final result and spot any errors before it’s too late!