# 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. September 25, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/risograph-halftone-shirt 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](/stories/protest-poster-riso). 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](/stories/punk-collage-zine-aesthetic) — 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](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric) 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](/shop). Somewhere a pink cat and a blue cat are asleep a few millimetres apart. From across the room it's one cat.