WHAT IS RISOGRAPH PRINTING?

Risograph printing (officially now just "Riso") is a low-tech, high-character print process that lives somewhere between a screenprint, a photocopier, and an offset press. It lays down vivid spot inks one color at a time, on uncoated paper, with no heat involved. The result is bright, slightly imperfect, tactile prints that look like nothing you can pull out of an inkjet.

If you've ever seen a zine, a gig poster, an indie art print, or a wedding invite where the colors look almost neon and the registration is just a hair off, that's probably riso.

How Risograph Printing Works

A risograph looks unsettlingly like a 1990s office copier: boxy, beige-ish, flatbed scanner on top. But under the hood it's doing something much closer to old-school stencil printing.

The process, in plain terms:

1. Your artwork becomes a master. The riso reads each color in your file separately and burns it onto a thin paper-and-plastic stencil called a "master." One color, one master.
2. The master wraps around an ink drum. Each color has its own drum: a cylinder loaded with that color of soy-based ink. The drum spins, ink pushes through the open areas of the master, and ink hits the paper.
3. Paper runs through, color by color. Single-color print? One pass. Two colors? Swap drums and run the paper again. Every extra color is another pass through the machine. Some machines have two drums that can print two colors at once. Ours only has one.
4. No heat. Unlike a laser printer that fries toner into the page, riso just deposits ink on the surface and lets it air-dry. Paper stays soft (no curls!), ink stays slightly raised.

That no-heat part is the big deal. It's why riso prints feel different. The paper fibers aren't crushed flat under a fuser, and the ink sits on top like a thin layer of pigment. It's similar to screen printing, but more mechanized.

What does a riso print look like?

A few things make a riso print obvious once you know what to look for.

• Saturated, slightly translucent spot colors. Riso inks are soy-based and behave a bit like watercolor pigments: vivid, but the color of the paper shows through. This is why fluorescent pink riso is the most-photographed color on the internet. (Sadly, we retired this color back in 2025, but hope it returns to the mix soon)
• Registration that's almost-but-not-quite perfect. Because each color runs through on a separate pass, there's always a tiny shift between colors. A millimeter here, half a millimeter there. It's not a misprint, it's the look.
• Texture and grit. Riso plays best with rough, uncoated papers: vellum, bristol, recycled stock, toothy text-weights. The print picks up the tooth of the paper.
• Overlap and overprint. When two colors stack, they don't blend like CMYK ink. They overprint, creating a third color where they meet. Two-color riso prints are basically little math experiments with light.
• The occasional roller mark, smudge, or ghost. Riso is a process, not a perfection. Because there's no heat, and Riso inks don't quickly like conventional inks, smudges are bound to happen, especially where the roller grabs the paper. We'll help you plan for all that.

Risograph ink colors

The RISO company manufactures dozens of spot ink colors — black and standard blues, fluorescent pink and orange, metallic gold, and oddities like "kelp" and "burgundy." At our shop we run a single-drum SF9450 risograph with six inks in rotation: Black, Green, Cornflower, Red, Grey, and Yellow. We're always looking to expand our selection, so if you have a special project that needs a different color, don't hesitate to reach out.

A few things worth knowing about riso inks:

• They're soy-based. Lower VOCs than petroleum inks, and they dry slowly, which means freshly-printed stacks need to be handled with care.
• They smudge. We've been told the ink never "fully" dries but we're not sure that true. Ink definitely needs time to dry between color runs. If you try to smudge a print within the first day or so, you definitely will succeed. But once dried, Riso prints will survive a rain storm (the paper will rip before the ink runs).
• They're translucent. Even riso "white" doesn't behave like screenprint or offset white. The paper will always show through, even with 100% black.
• Fluorescents glow. Fluorescent pink in particular is wildly more vivid than anything CMYK can produce. (Fluorescent drums are also harder to maintain, which is why we're don't currently have any.)

Risograph vs. screenprint vs. offset vs. digital

People always ask which other print method riso is most like. Honest answer: none of them, exactly.

Vs. screenprinting. Both push ink through a stencil. But screenprint is one-at-a-time, by hand, with thick opaque ink and a squeegee. Riso is automated and uses thinner, translucent ink. Riso is faster and cheaper for short runs. Screenprint is heavier and more opaque.

Vs. offset. Offset is what your local commercial printer runs for high-volume work — CMYK, super precise, fully blended color. Riso is the opposite: spot colors, imperfect registration, low setup cost. Offset wins on quantity and accuracy. Riso wins on character.

Vs. digital and inkjet. Digital prints are flat, smooth, predictable, and look identical every time. Riso prints have texture, ink quirks, and slight variation print to print. Need a uniform deliverable for a corporate client? Go digital. Want something with hand-feel? Go riso.

There's no "best." Only "right for the project." Questions? Contact us.

What people print on risographs

Riso is at its best on smaller, art-driven runs. The format suits:

• Art prints and posters
• Zines and small books
• Gig and event posters
• Greeting cards and stationery
• Wedding and party invitations (the kind that don't look like everyone else's)
• Business cards and brand collateral for studios, bands, restaurants
• Stickers and bookmarks
• Notebook and notepad covers
• Anything illustration-heavy where the print is part of the art

What riso isn't great at

Before you book a job, know that Riso is not ideal for:

• Photo-realistic full-color reproduction. You can fake CMYK with four passes of riso ink, but it'll always look like riso. Which may or may not be what you want.
• Tight registration on tiny text or fine line art across multiple colors. Shifts happen.
• Massive runs. Riso shines between roughly 50 and 500 copies. Past that, offset is usually cheaper and faster.
• Coated or glossy paper. The ink won't dry. It'll smudge forever. Don't.
• Anything that needs to be 100% identical, print to print. Every print is a little different. That's the deal.

A quick history of the risograph

The risograph was invented in Japan in the 1980s by RISO Kagaku Corporation, originally as a high-volume office duplicator — a faster, cheaper alternative to the mimeograph and the photocopier. Schools, churches, and political campaigns used them to bang out flyers and newsletters at low cost per page.

Then artists got their hands on them.

By the early 2000s, indie publishers, zinemakers, and graphic designers — especially in the US, UK, and the Netherlands — started using risographs for the exact qualities offices considered defects: visible registration shifts, ink rub, oversaturated color, lo-fi paper feel. A small ecosystem of riso print studios sprung up in art schools and warehouses. Today riso is everywhere in independent publishing, gallery editions, and small-batch design work.

It is, in a real sense, a copier that became an artist.

Risograph printing FAQs

What does "riso" stand for?
"Riso" is short for Risograph, the brand name of the original Japanese machine. RISO Kagaku Corporation still makes them.

Is risograph the same as screenprinting?
No, but they're cousins. Both push ink through a stencil. Screenprinting is hand-pulled with thick, opaque ink and a squeegee. Risograph is machine-automated, uses thinner translucent ink, and is much faster for short runs.

How many colors can a risograph print?
Per pass, one. A two-color riso print means two passes through the machine. We can run four or even six colors on a single piece if you're accept that registration will drift. Most riso prints land in the one-to-three-color range.

Is risograph printing eco-friendly?
Relatively, yes. Soy-based inks, low energy use (no heat), no toxic solvents, and the master sheets compost. Most riso shops print on uncoated paper that's recycled or FSC-certified. It's one of the lowest-impact print processes out there.

How long do riso prints last?
Stored flat, dry, and out of direct sunlight, riso prints last for decades. Soy inks aren't fully UV-stable, so framed prints in bright windows will fade faster than archival pigment prints. For most art and stationery uses, this is a non-issue.

Can you print photos on a risograph?
You can. The result will look like riso, not like a photograph — halftone dots, posterized tones, slightly off color. Designers often use riso for photo work because of that look, not in spite of it.

Can I bring my own paper?
Yes, as long as the paper meets the machine's requirements (uncoated, the right weight, no glossy finishes).

Does riso ink rub off?
Fresh prints rub off until the ink fully dries. Stacked under a heavy book overnight, or air-dried for 24–48 hours, they stabilize. Don't store them face-down on a glossy surface and you're fine.