French connection - My top 3 tips for Riso
It’s the end of my adventure at Riso Pop! During my stay I learned a lot about riso printing. Seeing and being part of the studio has made me discover different ways of working. With Aafke guiding me through, I have learnt a lot about organizing and planning a project but also working as a freelancer in general. If you want to know more about that I did an interview on Aafke that you can read :
An overview of the internship
In these three months at the studio, I did a community project called Moonshine that I explain more in detail in my previous post. But that was not the only thing I did in the studio! I also got to print with both analog and digital techniques, discover different colour combinations and learn more about how the machine works. So for my last blog I thought about sharing some tips and personal thoughts I learned about Riso printing :
#1 The scanner is pretty cool
Analog printing caught my attention as the first printing technique I used. The scanner is an underrated part of the machine because many people think that you can only print digitally, through a computer. But for example, I was invited to participate in a special collage workshop, which was very interesting as we got to experiment with the scanner’s photo mode. This option in the riso machine allows you to add a dotted raster to the print, without having to edit your original file. With that I found out that mixing dots and pencil mode made the overlapping more detailed and clear.
#2 Don't panic!
My most important job at Riso Pop other than the moonshine project might be the workshops. During these printing sessions I’ve been handling the machine and have gotten to know more about how it works and reacts (that sometimes makes me panic). Paper jams are the most frequent, it can happen because of how the paper is placed or because there’s too much ink. Another example of troubleshooting I have encountered is when a file is not printing because the machine is locked in printing mode or because the file is too big. An additional tip for Adobe users when you export a psd/ai file to pdf it automatically saves all the layers so that you can still modify it which is great. But that also makes it very heavy and hard sometimes for the riso printer to read it and print it. So instead, for riso printing to make your file lighter when exporting your pdf, you can deselect the layers button.
The machine is quite capricious but when everything works fine there are some nice parts to handling and printing. Like the satisfaction of aligning layers, and discovering the end result with the bright riso colours afterwards.
#3 Use coloured paper
Also to really have fun with colours is not only playing with different riso inks but also different coloured or even textured paper! When printing, depending on the colours you’re using the print will look completely different on yellow paper than on white or brown. And there are no limits as long as the masters are ready, you can experiment on a great number of colours!
During the workshops, choosing coloured papers that would match prints was the most exciting and experimental part of the process that I really enjoyed. Since the result could change completely or have a different vibe. (A fun discovery I made is that pink on yellow paper makes red and I’m sure that the same applies to some other colours like yellow on blue paper.)
