The misregistration proves it was urgent

Two colours, red and blue, and where they overlap the edges don't quite meet. There's a millimetre of white showing on one side and a purple sliver on the other.

A commercial press wouldn't allow that. That's the point.

Why does the misregistration matter?

Because it's evidence of how the thing was made.

Riso prints one colour per pass, and the paper moves slightly between passes. Perfect registration would mean a slow, careful, expensive process. Visible offset means somebody ran two hundred copies in an evening because they were needed tomorrow.

The imperfection is a timestamp on the urgency, and that's why the format reads as sincere in a way a clean poster doesn't.

What are the components?

Five, all consequences of the machine.

• Two spot colours, usually a fluorescent — riso inks are bright and slightly transparent.
• Visible misregistration where they overlap, creating a third colour.
• Coarse grain in the solid areas, from the ink drum.
• Woodcut or heavy brush figures — the imagery tradition that goes with it.
• Hand-set or hand-lettered type, blunt and short.

The transparency is worth knowing about: riso inks overlap to make a third colour rather than covering, which is why the palette always looks slightly unlike anything else.

Where does the imagery come from?

Political woodcut, which is much older than riso.

Raised fists, marching figures, tools, wheat, hands — the vocabulary comes from early twentieth-century labour printing, when a woodblock was the cheapest way to make an image many times. Bold, high contrast, no fine detail, carved rather than drawn.

The pairing works because both technologies solved the same problem: get an image to a lot of people, fast, with almost no money. Constraint-born styles are the ones that survive on cloth.

What should it say?

Three words at most, and about something specific.

HOLD THE LINE. NOT THIS ROAD. KEEP THE WARD OPEN. The register is built for a demand rather than a sentiment, and it's strongest when the demand is local and concrete — a specific building, a specific decision.

Generic slogans are where this format goes flat. A poster about a real thing somebody is trying to stop has force; a poster about justice in general is decoration.

Is a political shirt a good idea?

That's your call and it's worth making deliberately.

A design in this register is a statement worn in public, and it'll be read as one. Some people want exactly that; others want the aesthetic without the position, which is a slightly awkward place to stand.

The honest middle exists: the same register applied to something local and unglamorous — a library, a bus route, a swimming pool — carries the form's urgency without asking the wearer to take a side on anything national.

Can I use an existing campaign's artwork?

No — campaign graphics have designers, and many organisations' marks are protected.

The tradition is free and always has been. Woodcut figures and riso printing are methods, and the whole culture around them is built on sharing files rather than protecting them.

Which means an invented cause, or your own real local one, is entirely in keeping.

Does it print well?

Extremely — it's two flat colours with deliberate imperfection.

Nothing about the register depends on fidelity, and the artefacts that would be defects elsewhere are the aesthetic here. Bone or cream grounds suit it best, since riso is a paper process and the white showing between colours is part of the look.

Keep the type large. Hand-set letterforms at small size lose the character that makes them hand-set.

How do I get one made?

Describe the cause at JustOG — what's being defended, the woodcut image, and the three words. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

A press would have lined those colours up. Nobody had time.