Risograph printing
Risograph Printing
Roots Studio provides risograph printing for commercial use. We offer printing of art prints, posters, infographics, invitations, zines, leaflets, business cards, flyers and more. Our riso can print up to sizes of a3. We have 3 inks available at present, we can print up to 300gsm, have a selection of papers and card in stock, with more available on request.
What is riso?
Risograph printers were first invented in Japan in the 1980s and were originally made for producing high volume prints. The risograph printer is a mesh based print process which is similar to screen printing. The printer creates thermal ‘Masters’ (stencils), for each colour/layer of a print. This stencil is wrapped around the ink drum, and each time a sheet of paper passes through it the ink is fed through the stencil onto the paper.
The risograph printing process, allows layers of ink to be mixed, creating grainy gradients. The soy based ink produces aesthetically pleasing textures and colours, making them suitable for art printing, design, or eye catching infographics. Check out our gallery or instagram for examples!
The Risograph printer is an environmentally friendly and cost effective printer. Riso printing is extremely energy efficient and generates a minimal amount of waste, as the inks made from soy and the stencil paper from banana leaf, meaning this printing process also happens to be vegan!
What's different about riso?
Our Inks
Black
Blue
Red
Yellow
Our Paper
white recycled
140gsm
Fabriano
cartridge
200gsm
Assorted Pastel
175gsm
Dayglo
Green, Yellow or Pink.
100gsm
Please note, if you would like a specific paper for your project, get in touch!
We would be more than happy to order it in for you. Our paper stock is changing all the time so please let us know in advance what paper you would like.
At the moment our ink selection is limited, but we will have more available in the near future.
Preparing artwork for risograph
Risograph printers read files and artworks in grayscale, so any designs need to be exported and saved as a flattened PDF in grayscale format.
Risograph printing can produce gradients and colour blends by layering and altering opacity levels. If working to produce this affect, please avoid large areas of block colour and work at an opacity level of 50% max. This will help the inks to mix evenly and create another colour.
If printing in multiple layers, your artwork or files need to be separated into individual files for each colour layer. This can be done by hand with tracing paper, or you can work in separate layers on Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, making sure to export each layer in greyscale.
CMYK seperation
Another way of preparing your layers for print is to separate the colours of your design in photoshop. This creates unique affects with full coloured artwork or photograph's.
Working in CMYK mode, go to your channels panel. Here you can see your separate CMYK layers, clicking the drop down option, select ‘split channels’. This will automatically open your file in photoshop as four separate grayscale layers, in CMYK. Save these files separately as flattened PDF'S and they are ready for print.
Keep in mind
Each print is unique. registration varies from print to print, especially when using more than 2 layers.
Risograph printing uses ink which never entirely dries, so be aware that your prints may be prone to smudging when handling. Most smudge marks can be erased lightly with a rubber.
The stencils (master) can become flooded, and soak the paper if your design is too ink heavy. Please try to avoid using very large areas of block colour in your design when printing in more than 2 colours.
Small faint marks may appear from the pressure roller, especially when printing in more than 2 layers. These aren't very noticeable but can be removed by lightly erasing with a rubber.
