Risograph printing is a stencil-based duplicating process in which a machine burns a master stencil from artwork, wraps it around an ink drum, and pushes soy-based ink through it onto paper — one colour at a time, each colour from its own drum. The process was introduced by the Japanese company Riso Kagaku in 1986, per the manufacturer's own corporate history, as an office duplicator; artists adopted it precisely because it does not behave like a press. This explainer covers how the machine works, why its colours overlap imperfectly, and why studios keep the drums spinning.
Where did the Risograph come from?
Riso Kagaku launched its first digital duplicator in August 1986, building on the mimeograph and spirit-duplicator tradition, per the company's published history. The machine's purpose was cheap, fast duplication for offices and schools — and its design decisions, from the paper feed to the ink system, were engineered for economy. Studios now pay tens of thousands of pounds less than a litho press costs to set up; drum prices and common papers are published by UK suppliers such as Persons From (London, UK) and Hearth (Leeds, UK), where individual drums typically sell in the low hundreds of pounds. The economy that made it an office workhorse made it an artist's press.
How does a print actually get made?
In documented steps, per the manufacturer's process descriptions and studio guides:
- Artwork for one colour is sent to the machine, which burns tiny holes into a wax-bonded fibre master wrapped around the chosen drum.
- Ink is pushed through the master's perforations as paper feeds beneath the drum at high speed — the process is closer to screen printing's logic than to a photocopier's.
- The drum is swapped for the next colour, and the sheet runs again; registration between passes is mechanical, not computer-corrected.
- Each additional colour is another drum, another pass, and another chance for the layers to drift.
Why do risograph colours overlap imperfectly?
Because the machine has no precision registration system to speak of. Each colour pass feeds the same sheet through a fast paper path, and a millimetre or two of drift between passes is normal — the overlays and small offsets that give riso prints their depth. The inks are also translucent soy-based colours that mix optically on the page: blue over pink makes a third colour rather than covering it, per ink documentation from the manufacturer. The misregistration artists chase is the same one offices once complained about. Technology's flaws, adopted, become a medium's character.
What should makers know about paper and planning?
Uncoated papers perform best — the soy ink needs absorbency to set, and coated stock can resist it, per supplier guidance. Planning is colour separation: each colour is its own artwork, and overprints are chosen deliberately for the mixtures they will create. Printers' public rate cards in the UK typically price by number of colours and quantity, which rewards designing within two or three drums — a constraint the medium's best work wears lightly.
Why does the process endure in studios?
Because it produces a real printed object — ink sitting on paper, in editions, at a cost that lets experimentation survive contact with a bank account. Risograph studios now anchor independent publishing scenes from London to Leeds and far beyond, per the studios' own public listings. The machine was built to make offices cheaper; it ended up making artists' editions possible, one misregistered colour at a time.