Two inks that never quite agree where the cat is
Riso prints are two or three bright inks laid down one at a time and never perfectly lined up. The slip between them, and the colour they make where they overlap, is the whole look.
A folded oatmeal tee on a shelf. On it, a tabby cat asleep on a windowsill, curled nose to tail beside a fern in a pot. Two inks only — fluorescent pink and a medium blue — both in grainy dots, and neither sitting quite on top of the other: a pink edge on one side of the cat, a blue one on the other, a purple wherever they cross. Underneath, in small typewriter letters: SUNROOM, 4PM.
It's two colours. It looks like three, and neither layer is quite where it's supposed to be. That's riso.
What is the risograph look?
A print made of a few bright, flat inks, each laid down separately as its own halftone, and never perfectly lined up.
A risograph is a stencil duplicator from Japan that became the machine of choice for zines, posters and small-press art because it's cheap to run in bulk. It prints one colour per pass, from a small palette of vivid soy-based inks — fluorescent pink, a medium blue, sunflower yellow, a teal. Every extra colour means feeding the paper through again, and the paper never lands in exactly the same place twice. Grain, visible dots and slightly shifted layers aren't defects on a riso print. They're what people go to a riso studio for.
Why does the misregistration look good?
Because it proves the layers are real.
When the pink lands a couple of millimetres off the blue, a thin sliver of each shows along every edge — a pink shadow on one side of the cat, a blue one on the other. It reads as handmade and small-batch, the opposite of a flawless digital print. The slip has to be consistent across the image, the same distance and direction everywhere, because that's what a real press does; random shifts in random directions read as a mistake rather than a method.
Where do the extra colours come from?
From the overlaps. Two translucent inks printed on top of each other make a third.
Riso inks are semi-transparent, so where the pink dots sit on the blue dots, the eye sees a deep purple that was never printed as its own colour. With a halftone in each layer, the mix changes continuously: more pink here, more blue there, a spectrum of purples in between. Two inks can cover a surprising amount of a picture — skin, shadow, sky and foliage all out of one pink and one blue.
What kind of image suits riso?
Quiet, everyday scenes, and anything that looks good in two colours.
A cat asleep in the sun, a plant on a sill, a corner shop at closing time, someone reading on a bus — riso has a long history in zines and small-press illustration, and its register is affectionate and domestic as often as it's political. The protest poster is the other classic use, and that version carries a very different charge. A good riso subject has a few big shapes, one or two textures, and light coming from somewhere.
Is the look anyone's to own?
No. Risograph is a machine and a printing method, and the look belongs to everyone who uses one.
The inks, the grain, the two-colour palette, the misregistration: all of it is a technique. A specific artist's illustration printed on a riso is their work, like any drawing, and copying that drawing is copying the artist, not the process. Invent the scene and the style comes with no strings attached.
Is this different from a zine or collage look?
It's a cousin. A zine is a format; riso is one of the machines zines are made on.
The cut-and-paste punk zine is black photocopier toner and scissors — harsh contrast, torn edges, one ink. Riso zines are softer and more colourful: bright spot colours, grainy halftones, a slip between layers. Both are small-press looks, and both are made of what their machines couldn't hide.
Does it print well?
Yes. Two flat inks in coarse halftone is exactly the kind of image that suits cloth.
On a shirt the riso effect is recreated rather than run through the machine itself, so the dots can be sized well above the weave and the offset set by design. Warm light shirts — oatmeal, cream, natural — do what paper does on a riso print, showing between the dots and holding the fluorescent pink at full strength. Fluorescent pink and medium blue is the most recognisable pairing; pink with teal, or yellow with blue, are the other common sets.
How do I get one made?
Describe the scene at JustOG — a two-colour risograph halftone, which two inks, the layers slightly out of register. 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.
Somewhere a pink cat and a blue cat are asleep a few millimetres apart. From across the room it's one cat.