INTRODUCTION
K-Magazine is a publication covering current topics within the print and typographic community. Featuring active associates from around the world it looks to engange and showcase professional opinions and techniques to further our understanding within design.
STUTTGART / DEU
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Markus is a german graphic designer. His main focus of work is editorial design, visual identities, type design and photography. His work takes place in the intersection of fashion, culture and art.
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Markus John
K: Hi Markus, can you tell us a little bit about your background? M: I’m a graphic designer from Germany that studied in the southern part near Stuttgart. I attended the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd which is a quiet and conservative university. I learned all the basics here, but I realised at a very early stage of my studies, that i want to focus on a different field of graphic design – editorial design, visual identities, typedesign and photography – all in the intersection of fashion, culture and art. So i travelled a lot, made some stops in Stuttgart, Berlin and Copenhagen and always tried to get as much inspiration and different views as possible. In a retrospective, I would choose a different university with a specific direction, like ECAL in Lausanne. Beside that, I spent a lot of time with photography and type design - both on an autodidactic form. K: How is living in Berlin?
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M: In the meantime I don’t live in Berlin anymore. I moved back to the southern part of Germany, Stuttgart. Berlin was a great time, very inspiring and fast-moving. On the other side also fleeting, independent and not so reliable. You can feel the creative pulse, but it’s also a bit overflown with artists, musicians and graphic designers, which doesn’t make it easy. I worked for Bureau Mario Lombardo which was a big chance and also a great experience. I’m pretty sure that i will move back to Berlin in the near future.
Stuttgart / DEU
K: I’m interested how the name of your practise was conceived? M: The story behind ‘A-Second-Place’ is easy. I always want to stay in the background as a person and want my work to speak for itself. So ‘A-Second-Place’ is the virtual place for my work or my portfolio. As it were, ‘the first place’ is the physical work or the printed matter. Another issue is that I never wanted to use my name as a brand - so this is more a kind of understatement, It’s more about the work. K: Your design practise runs through a large amount of areas, is there a favourite?
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M: I always and still try to focus and improve my editorial, typographic and photographic skills. Of course, there are always different areas which are automatically included, like information design or infographics, but in my opinion it is important to focus on a small selection of areas and then expand it – there is so much to learn. In previous jobs I was always the one who made the experience, the whole online plaform like marketing, webdesign etc. and this is something that is becoming more important for me and my practise and something I can progress at in the future. Print and online don’t work without each other – they enlarge each other.
Markus John
K: Your visual style is intriguing, what are your inspirations and how do they affect your projects? M: I’m very fascinated by the fashion world and take a lot of inspiration like colours, patterns and the whole vision from it. At the beginning I also dealt with the idea to study fashion design or something similar but my drawing skills are just too bad. (laughs) My inspiration or better said challenge is, to bring both areas together, therefore you also need a stong feeling, knowledge and understanding of fashion as a graphic designer. I’m also a big fan of the whole book and magazine culture. I buy and collect them, more than I prefer. It is always important to know what’s going on. K: When did you get involved with typography? M: I started with typography during college on a self educated level. I drew my first letterforms and began using font software to develop them as well as reading a lot of books and scanning a lot of new typefaces. Later on I visited some courses and workshops. K: Can you explain about your font ‘Rasmus’? M: ‘Rasmus’ is the serif continuation of my first typeface, Tilde. I wanted to expand my knowledge and create a font family, regular/bold and italic/ bold italic. I began with Rasmus during my studies in Copenhagen, where I also joined some type courses and improved it afterwards. The typeface bases on classic serifs like Times or Sabon paired with contemporary details. One significant detail are the oblique serifs and edges. The bold version has a larger x-high. Therefore it becomes more equal. The font is conceived for headline and teaser texts. K: Rasmus is now on Ten Dollar Fonts, how did this come about?
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M: At the beginning I created a mini-website for ‘Rasmus’ where you can test and buy the font. Ten Dollar Fonts is a great type collective from New Zealand and its well known internationally. It is always hard to self publish products, but I wanted ‘Rasmus’ to be available for a wider audience, therefore they were perfect. It is also a great exchange and you get feedback from different designers and the collective support each other.
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Stuttgart / DEU
LONDON / UK
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Rachel is a Graphic designer based in South East London. She graduated from Camberwell College of Arts and has progressed to Fraser Muggeridge. With a keen interest in type and type design we wanted to ask her about leaving university.
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Rachel Treliving
K: Hi Rachel, I saw you graduated last year from Camberwell (congrats), how was that? R: The final year was super busy – as it was nearly a year ago now it feels like a bit of a blur to be honest – you must be feeling like that now!
K: Your work is very typographic, did this interest come about earlier within your degree or at the later stages?
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R: I guess you could say that during second year I had an “epiphany” – so to speak – when our tutors arranged a short course learning the basics of typography. Each week we were introduced to a new method such as calligraphy or modular alphabets, and by the end of the course we presented our whole alphabet drawn up in FontLab. I made this really ropey typeface called ‘Calli Sans’ – a calligraphic sans serif typeface – clever name, huh? From then on, I got to know FontLab and begun to draw my own letters which was really exciting. I also did a lot of drawing with a pencil and paper – this helped me to understand the logistics of the letter I wanted to create before drawing it up on the computer. I really enjoyed this part however I felt like there was only so much I could teach myself from typography books, manuals and youtube tutorials. So after a bit of searching online I decided that in February of third year to go to to “Type Clinic” in the snowy mountains of Trenta, Slovenia. The idea of the week long workshop is to go there with a typographic problem you want to solve and create a body-text typeface with a minimum of 40 characters. It was there I made my first fully working typeface, Kink. Everything I learnt in that intense week massively informed my work when I got home. I’d recommend it to anybody interested in type design.
London / UK
K: Your font ‘Precis Display’ was used for your degree show, can you tell me a bit about it? R: It’s not strictly mine! Four of us got together because we wanted to see how a working in a group on a type project would work. We took influence from sans serif type specimens house in the Camberwell letterpress studios. This we felt gave us a direct link to Camberwell and enabled us to set some design rules and characteristics of the typeface that we had to stick to. K: Was it particularly difficult in terms of working with others to create a font? and how was the work shared? R: Once we discussed the recipe for our font (e.g. grotesque, sans serif ) and collated our references from the letterpress studio, we all sat down and drew the ‘n’ and ‘o’ characters. We then had a discussion to see what set we liked best and what things weren’t working. Once we had set the rules – a base to work from – we could make sure that everybody was working to the same dimensions and create the other characters from there. We assigned each other similar characters (o,c,e / b,d,p,q etc) to work on and then discussed after each set was done. The project worked because we had this constant discussion about each decision made. It was a very effective way of working for a week and the end result was perfect to use in the degree show as a display face. I think one day we’d pick it up again and refine it further for other designers to use!
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K: Much of the design community publish their work online, do you differ the selection of projects for a printed portfolio as to an online one? and has this online platform benefitted you?
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Rachel Treliving
R: Having an online presence and a digital portfolio serves a different purpose than a printed one. They could both have the same work in them but can be used as a voice for a designer in different ways. I think it’s important to have an online presence because not only does it familiarise the design community with your work but it gives a wider range of people chance of coming across your work. Having an online job definitely lent a hand to getting my first proper job working freelance for the Colophon guys back in September. They came across my online portfolio and subsequently offered me work after I graduated. With a physical printed portfolio it’s something you want somebody to see up close to feel – this could be before or after they have seen your work online. A physical portfolio is different because you want someone to notice the details – the paper stock you have chosen, the smell the ink or the embossing from the letterpress. K: How was the transition from student to freelance designer? R: In terms of problem solving I’d say the process of learning is the same. As a student you don’t know what the hell you’re doing half the time and you have to figure things out and chat to people about the best way to do something is. I was freelance at Colophon for a brief period working on a few typefaces over a couple of months. I think design at any stage is about trying things (everything) out – a student, freelance or whatever title you have, it is about trial and error.
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“We took influence from sans serif type specimens housed in the Camberwell letterpress studios. This we felt gave us a direct link to Camberwell and enabled us to set some design rules”
London / UK
K: Favourite printing process and why? R: When I was at uni there was nothing more better than going down to letterpress. The first time I got my own design cut into a zinc plate and printed it on one of the presses was definitely exciting. K: I thought I would finish with a nice question and ask what font is your favourite? R: I like looking at old printed books and ephemera for inspiration typefaces. There something really exciting about zooming into a page and looking at all the imperfections and differences between every letter when the ink is pressed into the page. My motivation for creating “Gray” was through analysing the pages of ‘Scotch Roman’ text in a first edition of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” at the British Library. I loved the way the tail of the lowercase ‘a’ swooped up behind the stem almost vertical to it, I was dying to take inspiration from that.
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‘Gray’ by Rachel Treliving
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LONDON / REYKJAVÍK
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Comprised of Mads Freund Brunse & Guðmundur Úlfarsson GUNMAD is a design studio with a focus on typography. creating work for different industries, entrepreneurs, artists and creative thinkers. Through an experimental and idea-driven approach they create enigmatic and wellcrafted design. In 2013, Or Type was founded, an online type foundry displaying and selling typefaces developed as research or designed for specific projects.
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Or Type / GUNMAD
OT: Yes, we’re Guðmundur and Mads, Icelandic and Danish designers. We met while studying and living at the Krabbesholm Art College in Denmark about 10 years ago. After Krabbesholm Guðmundur went to study at the Rietveld in Amsterdam and Mads at the ECAL in Lausanne. We kept on working together ever since. K: How did you start GUNMAD? OT: We started working together on school projects while we studied at Krabbesholm. After our paths separated we kept on working together on various projects, selfinitiated, as well as some applied work. We’ve continued to collaborate like that, despite being in different countries.
K: Being thousands of miles away from each other must require a lot of communication, how do you both maintain the workflow and split the work. OT: Yes we do communicate a lot, discussion, dialogue and exchange of ideas is sort of the foundation of our work. We usually split responsibilities, so that one person is responsible for one project, but it really depends on each project. Every project is different and demands a different workflow. K: Congrats on your exhibition at Unit Editions, how was the response and turnout? OT: The turnout was great, many people came down. It was positive to see so many people and especially younger designers and people we had never met before. We were really happy about the setup we did together with Unit.
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K: Could you both tell us a little bit about your background?
London / ReykjavĂk
K: With this increasing coverage of your foundry Or Type, is there a pressure to start releasing fonts regularly or to develop existing ones further? OT: Yes definitely, which is a nice feeling. This was really the aim of establishing the project; to facilitate the development and distribution of our typefaces. We have been working hard on this the last couple of years and we’re starting to have a good platform in place that we can start developing from. K: What sparked the idea of opening a font foundry?
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OT: Being able to make our fonts available for other designers to use. We had started working on several fonts throughout the years and it started to make sense to us start distributing them. This pushed us to getting several fonts done and start thinking about new ones.
A few years ago, we were in a residency in Denmark where we had a lot of time to work on type. That’s where we created the fundament of what is Or Type. K: Did you both have previous experience with designing type? OT: We started designing type while studying, although it really took off afterwards. We come from two very different schools yet very similar, but our type design courses were very different. This has been good, coming from two different perspectives has helped us creating our philosophy. K: It is becoming increasingly popular for graphic designers to begin creating their own typefaces, would you also class yourselves as type designers while you have been running Or Type? OT: We don’t really like putting ourselves in a box actually. If we have to, we would probably say that we’re designers working with type, or something along those lines. K: As you are both very busy with multiple projects, when do you focus your time on developing your fonts? OT: It comes in bigger chunks of time. Often when a typeface is needed for a specific project, that’s when we get the push to develop and finalise them. We’re trying more and more to take the time to work on type these days. K: Do you tend to use your fonts within your design work? OT: Yes very often. They seem to be very appropriate to our vision and ideas of graphic design projects. K: Your practise works on multidisciplinary projects within design, do you have a favourite?
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OT: We’ve always been very attached to print, the physical object and smell of ink and paper is the best. Although we’re getting more and more pleasure out of doing web projects. The new technology and possibilities the web has to offer and how people are getting used to navigate the web is making it really interesting and fun.
K: Mads, Boogie at the Opera is an event you host over in Denmark. How’s that going? OT: That’s going great. It’s becoming an established underground night for obscure dance music. It’s pretty much a dancing party and about hearing and discovering new weird records, people seem to like it. K: I’m intrigued with the eclectic range of posters designed for each event. What are your influences and design process when creating the artwork? OT: This project is a collaboration with longtime partner Copenhagen Family Man. It’s always a long discussion to find the name of each event. The name can relate to the background of the invited DJ; geographic or artistically. The inspiration usually comes from the name and creating an appropriate art work to go with it but still staying simple, logic and expressive. K: There are very conceptual routes in all of your design work, what do you think developed these design values? OT: These values come from a will to collaborate with people, understanding what they do but at the same time trying to inject new ideas and meanings to what they do. K: For the people that want to start understanding / creating type, do you have any good advice?
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OT: Creating type takes a lot of time. Look at things around you and take in what you see. When it comes to drawing, a good advice is probably to work on a typeface as a whole from the start. Consider everything while developing; details, spacing and kerning etc.
BB BB Designer Guรฐmundur ร lfarsson
Release year 2013/2015
Foundry Or Type
Styles 8
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L10
L10 was initially designed for the 10 year anniversary book of the LungA Arts Festival in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. Conceived as a peculiar sans-serif with a subtle playfulness to it, L10 gives -
- a slap in the face to older humanistic sans-serifs. Being a family of different cuts and weights it’s a very versatile typeface that can be used for extensive projects across different media.
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BB BB
LONDON / UK
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Co-founded by Nathan Bryant and Hugh Barrell, Peckham Print Studio is a workplace dedicated to screenprinting. The duo set up shop down Peckham Rye providing open access memberships and weekly workshops to the public. Clients include, Bombay Bicycle Club and Urban Outfitters. We managaed to speak to Nathan to talk about the Studio and its conception.
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Peckham Print Studio
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Peckham Print Studio
K: Hi Nathan, you previously studied surface design, did that lead you towards the process of screen printing? N: The idea of surface design was fundamentally about design settings and things so you could make wallpaper and that sort of thing but then through that you can get into product design if you wanted to but with me it was mostly to do with the aesthetics of making something by hand and that type of craft so I did spend most of my first year hammering out loads of screen printing and stuff but I began to turn away from it towards my second year because I’d done so much of it I wanted to explore physically, like making and building installations so I really steered away from that type of stuff and hardly did it again - and somehow now I own a screen printing studio so it is very weird how that happened. K: So once you graduated how did Peckham Print Studio come about?
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N: It was a really organic process, myself and Hugh had started a project together because at the time he was really interested in screen printing a lot (as it was a big part of his practise) then I started to get back into drawing and printmaking and we thought we’d start something as we were already preparing to work together for a long time. So after we started that we connected with the guys who own The Sunday Painter and they said we have a space and we would like someone to set up a screen printing studio, so with me and Hugh already working together within those techniques we thought it would be perfect for us and that’s how it came about - but even prior to us starting Peckham Print Studio we said London was lacking printing facilities so we created something that’s professional, clean and an environment that we wanted.
London / UK
K: Do you feel over the years you have had to expand for your members? N: Well, the downstairs used to be a kitchen area and a large bathroom because they got rid of the other studio space and desk space so it’s become a lot more open because there is a less of a need for it, in which we’re dedicating more space to the members. We have about 10 members and the studio has been appropriated to cope with more activity and now that’s why we’re looking to expand even further. It’s still a pretty tight studio, if you’ve heard of Lovenskate, they were the first inspiration when we were thinking of building a studio and we went to their space and saw everything was also tight and tidy and it’s a real testament to what you can do with a smaller space and we looked at that and saw it could be done and said it’s fine, we can do it. K: Initially, did you think the studio could accommodate 10 members? N: When we first saw this space I didn’t think we could do anything - but you just have to do it and get on with it to the best of your ability and it really helped seeing someone do it and it working. So it gave us the reassurance that we needed. K: How many members do you usually get in at a time? N: Although we have 10 members, you don’t necessarily have them all in at a time - we have a few people who are in constantly like Rob Lowe because they need to be in exposing and preparing and then you get a few others who will come in on the evenings. It is quite funny as there is some members who we never see - but not because they are never in, but they only come in the evenings after I’ve left. K: So I guess you come back in and the studio is full of new work?
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N: Yeah definitely, or I just check on the instagram and see what’re they’re up-to - especially when the work was made here but I’ve never seen it, that’s really cool.
Peckham Print Studio
K: Do the members gain access to all of the facilities you offer? N: Yeah sure, they pay their membership fee and they get to come in three times a week so they could print for three hours at a time but we do also give them a key to the building so essentially all the stuff they want to do besides printing they can have however much time they need so no restriction on that. K: That’s a really good deal, especially as setting up takes the most time.
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N: Definitely, I think it’s one of the main things that people don’t realise about screen printing and even our commercial service and what we do is only a small proportion of the energy and the knowledge is actually physical printing itself.
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London / UK
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Anthony Burrill
We were invited down to the green pastures of Sussex to visit the designer at his home in Rye. A quiet sea-side town strangely bursting with hand lettering and typography. This is where Anthony works and spends his morning with the folk at Adams of Rye, tucked right at the back of a small store, the print house boasts beautiful sets of original wood block type that has been passed down through its 150 year history. Many of his posters adorn the walls of the print shop like trophies. His popularity rose with his ‘Work Hard & Be Nice’ piece which was a small print run around 10 years ago. Now representing Anthony and his work it has lead to working on projects with Hermes and Google, in which he claims is “taking up most of my time”.
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A prolific designer who has become some-what of an ambassador for print over the years. Anthony Burrill has featured all over the world with some of his works being held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York and has been exhibited in galleries around the world including The Barbican, The Walker Art Centre and The Graphic Design Museum, Breda. With a following growing year after year, Burrill has become a very popular fellow within the design community. Now boasting a hefty 30k following via Instagram we joked ‘he had officially made it.’ Anthony graduated into a pre-internet world where dial up connection’s were a thing of the future, “there was no online platforms to promote yourself and your work back then, whereas now everyone has a website.” Although digitally things have changed a lot, Burrill’s passion for printing techniques have stayed.
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Rye / UK
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Adams of Rye
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GLASGOW / UK
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Gabriella is a graphic artist who adorns objects & surfaces with colour and playful pattern. She has exhibited internationally and has most notably designed for brands such us Urban Outfitters, Stussy, Dr Martens & Bloomberg.
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Gabriella Marcella
K: How are you and Risotto doing? G: All is good thanks! Just back from a brilliant print trip to India with a whole lot of block printing onto fabrics. K: What was your intentions with Risotto? G: With the prospect of graduating, it pushed me to look seriously at my options of remaining in Glasgow. The city doesn’t have a wealth of edgy design studios, but what it does have is a very active and supportive creative community with the added benefit of affordable studios/ spaces. So I just found myself a studio and set up RISOTTO. K: You’re based in Glasgow, do you think the area you live in affects your design decisions?
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G: Yes and no - Being based in Glasgow effects the flow of my day, commute / social aspects etc, but not regarding design (I don’t think).
Glasgow / UK
K: Throughout your design process, was print always a big part of it or has this developed over time?
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G: The riso process is what founded my practice and inspired me to see colour the way I do. Over half of my current projects are outputting to alternative methods now, but I’m still aware of the Riso’s influence over my artwork - I think in spot colour, contrasting blocks and play with overlays.
had my fi Risograph w n New Yor aken an in
first shot o whilst stu rk. I had ndependen
Gabriella Marcella
K: When did you first become interested in the risograph? G: I had my first shot on a Risograph whilst studying in New York. I had taken an independent publishing class run by designer and publisher, Duncan Hamilton, and fell in love with the process pretty quickly. From here I started obsessing over zines, and publishers like Nieves books who I later went to intern for. K: I’m interested in how this printing technique changes your outlook on the design outcome? Does it require you to set up documents differently? G: Yes and No. We regularly modify artwork for Riso print, so it doesn’t necessarily have to have been made especially for riso, yet I definitely work with the riso output in mind, but thats also dictated by my artwork style. K: You also run a service alongside your practise, what sort of clients do you receive, and how do you split your time?
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G: Depending on the projects I have on, dictates my time. I often do work for music industry; party posters etc which involves print and design, but I also love commissions, that involve entirely deifferent outputs and scales and vary from window displays to apparel design.
Glasgow / UK
K: The risograph has become some what of a trend recently, do you think this printing technique will keep its appeal in the future?
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G: The risograph provides an affordable, tactile and immediate print option, which is why it is most appealing to artists and designers. It’s a medium you don’t have to be precious about, and is often used as an experimental tool as much as a desired output.
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Tilde Regular by Markus John
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
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0123456789 !?& .,:;{}[]
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Risotto’s Risograph Setup
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Risographs use a printing process that achieves similar rich spot colours & ink textures to that of a screen print, but with very fast duplication speeds & at a fraction of the print cost. The machine was designed to bridge the gap between cheap and expensive print methods (photocopy and offset/litho). This makes it ideal for runs of 1–2000 enabling prints to become more cost effective at 50+ prints. The RISO works by transferring artwork onto a screen/stencil called a master. The master is wrapped around a drum filled with soy ink. The paper is then fed flat through the machine whilst the ink is pushed through the stencil and through onto the paper - all while the drum rotates at high speed. Interchangeable colour drums allow for print in a variety of spot colours. Photographic reproductions are possible with a variation on CMYK. Misregistration can occur when printing more than one colour. It’s never more than a few millimetres, but something to consider when reviewing artwork. Large areas of solid ink is not recommended, especially round the edges and top of screen). It can cause paper to stick to the drum, or result in a visibly varied print consistency. This is especially important to note if prints are double sided or have multiple layers. Light track marks from the feed rollers can appear when paper passes through multiple times. On exiting the machine, prints stack on top of each other - if the artwork is ink heavy, it can mark the reverse of the prints. If marks do appear, most can be easily rubbed out with an eraser!
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Risotto’s Risograph Setup
To print solid colours, artwork should be set to registration black / rich black (100% CMYK). This is especially key for fine text, otherwise text will appear pixelated.
The RISO cannot print full bleed A3 artwork. Please leave a 10mm clear border on all prints.
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Please supply proofs for all artwork as they acts as a guide. Pdf/jpg format are best. For books, or prints with complex folds.
Name each file with the colour you’d like it printed in. For books, multiples and double sided prints, include sequence numbers too.
The maximum printable area is 400mm x 277mm, and we print from A3. We can fold A2 paper and feed it through the machine but only for small print runs.
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Editor, James Griffin Thanks, Anthony Burrill, Gabriella Marcella, Or Type, Alyson Hurst from G.F Smith, Rachel Treliving, Rick Banks, Markus John & Peckham Print Studio
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Printed by, Graham Thomas, 95 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0EJ