The Pitch

RISOGRAPH PRINTING

Risograph printing is the technique of using a risograph printer and creating stencil duplicates of an image, it was created by The Riso Kagaku Corporation originally for business printing and is known for its environmentally friendly materials and cost effectiveness. 

Risograph machines work with plates inside the machine, and prints on the material by using one colour after the other and each layer of colour has to be put through the Risograph machine one at a time. It's a stencil printer that is mainly used for high volume photocopying as well as duplication processes and printing. 

The inks that the Risograph machine uses are soya based and each screen is made from banana paper which is a paper that is created using the bark of a banana plant, this shows the natural based materials that the Risograph uses. It takes a single print to fully cover the print in ink, and each time the Risograph creates a heat based master screen for every colour it uses which it wraps around a metal drum inside the machine which then prints onto the paper that runs through it. 

The ink is pushed through tiny holes in the screen and onto the paper which is fed through the machine flat before being wrapped around the drum, the entire time the drum rotates at a high speed so that it can print onto the paper. 
Prints with a variety of colours have to be put through the machine one at a time as each time you have to change the drum colour to add up layers of colour. 

You scan your image through on top of the Risograph machine and the machine will print out the scan in block colours, thus if you wanted to add another colour this is why you would change the drum colour and put the print through again once it has dried, as well as the machine only prints in blocks you cannot have any kind of gradient effect. 

The Risograph machine currently only works with a small selection of colours, though you can blend these colours together to create new ones or different shades.
http://riso.deconstructed.org.uk

RISOGRAPH BASED COMPANIES

Ditto Print, Triptych
http://www.dittopress.co.uk/design/

Ditto Print

Ditto was one of the first companies in the UK to use Risograph artistically, they create warm and vivid designs.