The machine with a memory

The riso in our back room is older than half of our contributors. It smells of soy ink and warm drums, and it has opinions. Pink drifts a millimetre to the left. Blue floods the edges. Black is always slightly too confident.

Digital printing promises perfect repetition. The riso promises something better: a record. Every sheet carries the fingerprint of the moment it was made — the humidity, the paper stock, the tired hand that loaded it.

Misregistration is not a mistake. It is the page telling you it was touched.

Two colours, infinite moods

Limiting yourself to two drums forces decisions. What matters gets the strong ink. What whispers gets the tint. You learn to design with overlap, letting colours collide into a third one nobody planned.

We print our covers this way, fifty at a time, and number them by hand. None of them match. All of them are right.