What is Riso?

Riso means ideal in Japanese. The digital printer-duplicator a.k.a. Risograph was invented in 1986 by the Japanese company RISO Kagaku Corporation. Designed to be a high-volume, fast and low cost photocopier and marketed for schools, churches, prisons and political parties, the risograph reveals to have a very peculiar and unique aesthetic allowing beautiful color overlays. It stands between screen printing and offset lithography. Using a stencil-based printing process and real inks give riso-prints a result similar to silkscreen with beautiful bright colors.

Apart from the great cost/efficiency, the Risograph appears to also have great ecological qualities, since the inks are soy or rice-oil-based, the masters are made from banana paper and it produces a very minimum amount of waste.

The file is sent from a computer to the machine or is directly scanned on the flatbed-scanner. A master is created for each color, by burning an image onto a waxed sheet. This master is then wrapped around a drum and ink is forced through the voids of the master.

The paper runs flat through the machine while the drum rotates at high speed to print each image on the paper.